


I Bet You Wished

by liluye (mouselini)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Slow Burn, behavioral disorders galore, masturbatory work in progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:10:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouselini/pseuds/liluye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke is a grad student, Fenris is enrolled in the class he TAs for.</p><p>This doesn't have a plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter heavily revised 5/18/2016

5:45 AM. Six and a half minutes before the official sunrise.

There was a time in Hawke’s life when he’d considered 5:45 to be “obviously nighttime, still”. Like last week, when he really needed a Crunchwrap Supreme and drove Isabela's beaten-up Crown Victoria all the way to Taco Bell just to discover that they’d switched to the breakfast menu.

5:45 in the morning, when buses left their depots and ferries upped their commutes to four per hour, and the birds were awake enough to scream obscenities to the rooftops from the comfort of their shitty little nests. Five forty-fucking-five. _Better than 5:30_ , Hawke crooned to himself in a dream, _but not nearly as reasonable as 6_.

Snooze.

6:33 found Hawke bolting from his room with his shirt inside-out and smelling vaguely of the dog at the foot of his bed.

He blundered through the bathroom and washed his face, grabbed his toothbrush, and (after pretending he didn't have to pee as bad as he did) miraculously caught the 6:45 shuttle to campus where he dropped his phone three times during an “oh god, please walk the dog for me” text to Isabela. Tired, he ripped his shirt off and smelled it with a frown, turned it right-side-out and threw an exaggerated grin to the catcall he received from a stranger in a nearby seat .

For some reason, everyone on the road that morning aspired to drive like shit. The bus threatened to flip twice during its five-mile commute, once after being cut off by a blonde lady in a CRV (“Baby on Board!”) and another during a misinterpretation of kindness at a four-way-stop. Every single light was red, every single passenger was old or in a wheelchair, every single pothole was hit with blatant _intent_ and Hawke had to move three times to avoid getting coughed on by a man with four teeth. When the bus finally turned onto University Blvd, he nervously checked his phone through an inward sigh, biting his lip as the block print '6' turned to a block print '7'. A commute which should’ve taken ten minutes ended up pushing half an hour; his bladder howled at every bump.

Hawke ran off the bus before it came to a complete stop, screaming _“sorry!”_ at the disheveled driver as he flung his rucksack over his shoulder, cutting across the grassy field leading to the Arts and Sciences building where Dr. DuPuis was in the process of removing him from the dean's TA roster, probably. The campus was mostly empty, dark save for the occasional dot of a lamp in the window, sun veiled by the pink clouds typical of a dewy August morning that would’ve been pretty if whiskey had been in arm’s reach. In the distance the calm treads of Lake La Salle echoed sweetly between the caws of tired crows, but Hawke could only hear the desperate pleas of urinals behind every bathroom door he passed.

“Be here at 6:30, _Garrett_ ,” he mocked quietly, shouldering open the door to the psych department. He power walked down the hallway and veered a sharp right toward DuPuis' office, scowling when he realized he’d accidentally taken the long way in. “6:30, _Garrett_ , on the first fucking day of semester so we can talk about nothing for two hou-- _SHIT_!”

Turing a corner, he collided straight into the bowed head of a smaller figure and sent them both stumbling into their adjacent, eggshell-colored walls. Hawke immediately knelt to pick up the textbook that had fallen out of the stranger's arms; when he handed it over, he noticed that the hands that took it were masked by gloves.

“So you know it's August, right?” Hawke offered after a long, gaping pause, his eyes running up a pair of black sleeves.

“And?” snapped the stranger, yanking his textbook out of Hawke's hands. He backed away, searing a dark, green glare into the depths of Hawke's soul (if he had one) before spinning around the corner and sauntering down the hall.

“You're welcome!” Hawke called after him, frowning at the slope of his retreating back. If the kid heard him, he gave no sign. _Prick_.

Hawke knocked on the fourth door to the right and let himself in without a response. DuPuis was _absolutely_ in the process of removing him from the dean's TA roster; a Clif bar dangled from his chewing, mustached face like a horse's feedbag and he didn't look up from his computer screen when he said,

“Oh, look who's finally here.”

To which Hawke laughed, “yep! Sorry,” and flung his rucksack onto the chair closest to DuPuis' desk. “Excuse me for a sec--”

The slam of a bathroom stall echoed loudly down the hall.

–

Fenris took a seat, third row from the back, and stuffed his messenger bag between his lap and the generic, folding chair desk. He sighed and pushed back his hood, biting his bottom lip with a nervous glance at the girl who sat down immediately to his right despite the several empty seats around them.

“Sorry,” she said quickly, pulling out a bright purple spiral notebook and an assortment of colored fine-point Sharpies. “You're already sitting in the seat I like to pick, I hope you don't mind if I sit just over here.”

Fenris scowled, watching the movement of her tiny hands as they folded over a copy of the course syllabus. She already had bits of it highlighted in pink.

“Would you like me to move?” He asked. It came out a like a bite but the girl didn’t seem to care.

“Oh, no. I don't mind if you don't mind,” she flashed him a very kind grin and held out her hand. “My name’s Merrill.”

Fenris frowned down at her fingers, keeping his own knotted in the strap of his messenger bag. “Fenris.” He responded, curt, quickly averting his eyes in favor of studying the lecture hall. It was like every other lecture hall he’d ever been in: faintly yellow, moldy in the corner of the ceiling, stuffy, windowless. _Good._

“Fenris? That's a little bit unusual, isn't it?” said Merrill, retracting her hand to idly pick up a pen. “I like it though, it's a very nice name.”

Elbows on the desk, Fenris dropped his head into his arms with a silent groan. More students were starting to file through the doors, taking up every-other-chair in groups of five until they were eventually forced to sit next to each other. Any hope of finding a new seat would have to wait until the following week, though he had the sinking feeling that this Merrill would probably follow him if he moved, like a child.

He lifted his head in time for her to ask, “did you buy your textbook yet?” and stared in disbelief at his desk, where it clearly rested atop his sketchbook. When Merrill saw it, she burst into a fit of embarrassed giggles that grated every corner of his nerves.

“ _Oh!_ Sorry! Oh no, I promise I’m more observant tha— _HAWKE!_ ”

Before Fenris could really grasp what happened, Merrill was practically climbing over him to throw her spindly twig-like arms around the neck of a person standing in the aisle beside his chair. She was answered with a laugh, _“holy shit!”_ , and Fenris, holding his gloved hands up in aggravated surrender, forcefully leaned back as the stranger dragged her flat across his desk.

"I missed the shit out of you!"

"Oh, but I missed the poop out of you, too, though, you know--"

When the person finally pulled back, Merrill tiptoed around Fenris's seat to stand in the aisle with him. _God, you couldn't just do that in the first place?_ he thought sourly, body still plastered to the back of his seat, watching his pen roll with a _clank_ to the floor.

“What the hell are you doing in Social Psych? How was Brazil? _You're so fucking sunburned_!”

Merrill shielded her giggles with her hands. “You ask so many questions,” she whined. 

Fenris’s desk bounced when she pushed herself past him again. He was about to just get up and leave when she put her hand on his notebook and said, still laughing, “I'm so sorry, Fenris. _Oh!_ Hawke, this boy's name is Fenris! Isn't that very unusual?”

“It is.”

Fenris furrowed his brow and looked up, resigned, cornered, when his eyes locked onto the most accurate representation of autumn he'd ever seen, browns so deep they could have been red in the right light, framed dark all over, sharp, the sunshine of an honest smile beaming down at him and asking him to smile too. He could hear nothing but the beat of blood in his ears as he automatically reached forward, distantly feeling the brush of a thumb against the back of his palm while his heart slowly sank to its knees.

“I think we met,” the person--Hawke--stated, quickly ending the handshake to Fenris's unexpected dismay. He knelt to pick up the rogue pen by his feet, and as he slowly placed it on the desk he muttered, “you're _welcome_."

Fenris swallowed thick, suddenly conscious of everything that could possibly be wrong with him: his unwashed hair, his skin, the tear at the hem of his sleeve, the cold half-bagel he'd forced himself to eat on his way to class that morning. An uncomfortable heat settled on his cheeks as he frantically scanned Hawke’s quirked grin for a flaw. There were none.

He could not breathe.

“Don't talk much?” Hawke asked him, voice rounded and smooth, warm. “Psych major or...?”

“Uh—n-no—s—” Fenris began to stutter, his mouth running dry at the stretch of red fabric across Hawke’s chest. “Sorry. Sociology,” he mumbled, temporarily breaking contact with his laughing, Halloween-colored eyes to distractedly reorganize the books on his desk.

“Ah! Ha, explains why I've never seen you.”

With a horrified start, Fenris realized that Hawke's gaze had fallen down the length of his neck. He could feel his blush deepen as he swiftly covered his chin with a sleeve, slouching down his chair to the sound of Professor DuPuis' clearing throat. Hawke lingered for a moment to whisper something to Merrill, who once again leaned over Fenris's desk to give him an excited hug; this time, however, Fenris sat stony and motionless, his hands in fists below his bottom lip, his clouded eyes as wide as the horror taking residence in the pit of his stomach. It had been a long time since he cared who saw the scars running faint and discolored down the lines of his jaw—he'd forgotten how it felt.

“I am Dr. DuPuis and this is Social Psychology 322.” The class settled down, but still Fenris’s ears rang way too loud. “If you're not supposed to be here, kindly exit my classroom. If you're Hawke, you have four seconds to get to the front or you're fired.”

“Shit. _Okay, okay_. Sorry!”

The first class of the semester proved to be as boring as ever. Professor DuPuis immediately pitched an assignment and took his time reciting the syllabus out loud, page-by-page, as if his university students couldn't read it themselves. “My office hours are on the board,” he repeated for the twentieth time, “and if you need anything, my TAs have only one job. Contact them.” Hawke had taken shit-eating grin to the front of the room where he made himself cozy on a stool between Professor DuPuis and a very stern redheaded lady, and as a result Fenris glued his hand to his chin and his eyes to the doodles in the corner of his notebook.

An audible sigh echoed out of several students, Fenris included, when class was dismissed early. He piled his books into the messenger bag still on his lap and stood up quickly, merging into the line of exhausted students by the door. Merrill laughed again and he threw an agitated glance over his shoulder – Hawke was standing next to her with his strong arms crossed over his chest, feet apart, watching Fenris intently as he muttered something nobody could hear but her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> minor revisions made 5/19/2016

A week had passed since Hawke first learned Fenris's name.

To be completely honest, Hawke hadn't give him much thought for the first few days, spending maybe three minutes idly debating whether he bleached his hair before he dismissed the notion with a shrug and a bite of pizza. Merrill said that Fenris reminded her of a skittish cat she had when she was little, and at some point they agreed that he was cute despite his strangeness (her words, boy scout's honor), but it wasn't until the Thursday after their first class that Hawke started to wonder about Fenris's unusual nature.

At first he chalked it up to freshman fear, because freshman fear usually manifested through insecurities and wow-he’s-kind-of-a-dick demeanors, but as he'd filed DuPuis' class records he found that Fenris was starting his junior year as a returning student. His listed address was for an upperclassmen dorm not far from the Arts and Sciences department, and he had officially declared his major many semesters ago so he wasn't even a transfer from another school.

Immediately after snooping, Hawke had received an email from DuPuis containing the reading assignments from some students in his section. He'd made himself comfy at the campus coffee shop to grade them, animatedly frowning at the spelling errors and topical misconceptions littering every page he turned. When he'd finally gotten to Fenris's submission he paused, taken aback by the surprising amount of intellectual clarity in his opening sentence alone.

It took Hawke the remainder of the week to convince himself that Fenris just had a naturally engaging writing style and that his 600-word abstract merely stood testament to it. By the end of their second class together, however, Hawke had to reconsider:

Shy little Fenris stunned everybody with his quick wit and well-composed responses to nearly all of DuPuis' questions. He was quiet in volume but his intelligence screamed magnitudes; he was able to accurately analyze the class's readings at a level far past that of a typical undergrad student with marginal critical error, so much that Hawke actually felt compelled to set his own Bachelor's degree on fire. There were many moments in which Hawke exchanged shocked glances with Merrill from across the room, turning his palms up so often that his wrists cramped halfway through the lesson, and by the last hour he was literally sitting on the edge of his stool with only one thing on his mind:

_Who the fuck is he?_

Most charming of all was Fenris's absolute lack of conceit. He offered his answers in a manner that allowed his classmates to disregard him if they wanted, and he fidgeted slightly in his chair whenever he spoke out loud, as if deciding whether he was good enough to continue participating in the open discussion. His voice was tinged with a concoction of anxiety and excitement, but his words were precise, direct, and educated as fuck. Hawke beamed at him until his stomach threatened to leap out of his mouth.

When class was finally dismissed, Hawke swung his rucksack over his shoulder and made a bee-line for the door, keeping his eyes on the back of Fenris's hoodie as he walked down to the lawn outside. Catching up to him, Hawke fell into his step and loudly declared:

“So you don't need this class at all.”

Fenris spun around so quickly that Hawke was sure he sprained his ankle in the process. He held up a hand as he laughed, “you okay?” and tried not to wince when Fenris's immediate reaction was to duck his head.

“Startled,” Fenris responded gruffly, his body hunched and frozen, his tan skin seemingly pale beneath the sun. “What do you want?”

“I just told you,” Hawke quipped instantly. He made sure to broaden his smile because Fenris seemed like the kind of person who didn't like to be touched.

“I don't--”

“I'm saying that I read your abstract because you're in my section and it's my job,” Hawke paused to wave at Isabela across the lawn, “and you're light years beyond half the fucking grad students.”

His voice trailed off in favor of a shrug and a quiet _“what?”_ ; Isabela was making charades at him in the distance, smoking a cigarette in front of an enormous Above the Influence poster as she pointed dramatically at her ear. Hawke shook his head with a confused laugh, made an inappropriately suggestive gesture to her, and turned his attention back to Fenris.

“Sorry, my room mate,” he explained quickly. “So yeah. You don’t need the class, buddy. Like at all.”

Fenris stared silently at him. His sharp features were alight with what Hawke assumed to be surprise, cut by a strand of white hair that managed to escape from the hood he always seemed to have up. Christ, it was 85 degrees, clear skies, humid enough to make Hawke's hands clammy, and this kid was dressed head-to-toe in black.

It took Hawke a while to ask, “did I offend you or something?” because Fenris's bright green eyes were squinting up at him through a sheath of sunlight, and in them Hawke could see the thousand-layer expression of a quiet storm rippling just below the surface. He suddenly found himself wanting to ask whose eyes he had—his mom's or his dad's—where he came from, what music he hated, how many embarrassing books he had on his shelf, if his new favorite color was green too.

“No,” sighed Fenris, his voice low and apologetic. “I'm just really tired.”

There was something in the way Fenris said “tired” that made Hawke's lungs forget how to expand. He stood motionless, floored, watching the strangely innocent movement of Fenris's hands as they wrung together while he tried to remember why he stopped him in the first place, his mouth claiming the consistency of a tortilla chip, his head repeating who are you? every time Fenris threw nervous glances across the lawn.

After a moment of surely looking like an idiot, Hawke shook his head and somehow managed to find his tongue. “If you want,” he said, careful, “DuPuis can waive your credit so you can go to Advanced Theory. You're gonna get really bored if you don't.”

Fenris grinned a little, shuffling his feet and listlessly biting the nails that poked through his fingerless gloves. “I am not a psych major,” he reminded him. “I'm filling an elective.”

“You chose fucking _Social Psych_ to fill an elective?” laughed Hawke. “What's wrong with Basket Weaving? Or like, Creative Nonfiction?”

Fenris scrunched his nose. “I wasn't aware that they offered Basket Weaving here,” he said. “Is it a major? I may have severely wasted my college career.”

Awestruck, Hawke realized that Fenris had a delightfully deadpanned sense of humor. “It's not too late to minor in it, I'm sure...".

“I shall go to the dean's office immediately after lunch.”

“You eat lunch?”

As soon as he said it, Hawke's insides froze like the eighth layer of Hell and his stomach dropped to his ankles. _“You eat lunch”? Nice, dude._ Seventeen different exit strategies worked their way up Hawke's brain during the brief silence that followed, number eighteen halfway formed when Fenris suddenly covered his face in a glorious rumble of laughter.

“Yes,” Fenris gasped, looking up at Hawke with a wild glint in his perfect fucking eyes before turning around to laugh some more. “I—ha, God, _sorry_ —I do eat lunch. Sorry.”

The ice in Hawke's chest thawed instantly with the warmth that crept to his cheeks. “Why're you apologizing?”

Fenris's gaze fell again as he muttered, “I-I don't know, sorry.”

Just as the voice in Hawke's head resumed its mantra of _who are you?_ , a familiar, dark-skinned arm looped around his belt.

 _“Oh my darlin', oh my darlin',”_ sang Isabela, using his waist like a maypole as she walked in lazy circles around him, “I brought your dog to school today.”

“You what?”

“Ooh, who's _this_?”

Hawke quickly looked past Fenris's shoulder and glared in terror at the sack of dirty laundry bobbing in the waves of Lake La Salle. “Oh my God,” he gasped, “you fucking took my _dog_ to campus?!”

“What?” giggled Isabela, stopping her circles to better look at Fenris, who seemed to be growing visibly uncomfortable under her wanton scrutiny. “He's fine, Varric put a vest on him and told everyone he's a service companion. Who's this?”

In the distance Hawke could see two younger girls reach into the water to touch his dog, a giant Mastiff mutt cross-bred with what his mother once claimed to be the most unpredictable wolfhound to ever walk the earth. They’d gotten him as a puppy during his senior year in high school and even then they questioned whether he was actually a small bear, and two girls were trying to pet that, right there, without bothering to ask if he's friendly despite the (very fake) blue vest he sported.

Hawke dropped his head, rubbed his eyes, and made a low rumbling sound as he inadvertently began to imagine a lifetime of failing lawsuits. “Can you get him, please?” he begged, “before he rips someone's arm off? _Please_?”

Isabela crossed her arms. She showed no signs of moving, so Hawke clapped his hands to the sides of his head and looked up at the sky in hysterical, purpling defeat. “ _Agh_ , this is Fenris from DuPuis' class,” he groaned, “Fenris, Isabela, my room mate of like two years.” His words were punctuated by the echo of an annoyed bark, followed by a _splash_ and a choir of petrified shrieks. “Oh my God, Bel, can you please just get him?”

“Fine, but I'm taking him to Gender Studies so he can learn to respect people who present themselves as women--”

“ _Christ._ ”

Hawke watched her until he was sure that his dog was leashed. Turning back to Fenris, he grumbled “do you like dogs?” while he pinched the bridge of his nose, but his heart collapsed when he realized that Fenris's spark of laughter was gone for good.

Fenris responded with a gesture halfway between a shrug and a nod, but Hawke was already running over a map of ideas to get him to smile again.

“Wanna meet mine?”

–

Fenris wasn't expecting to talk to Hawke after class but it seemed “expecting” and “Hawke” didn't go together in a sentence.

He'd felt, rather than heard, Hawke's observation. There was a certain cadence to Hawke's voice that tugged ruthlessly at the gravitational equilibrium of Fenris's left foot; had anyone else approached him, he would have simply asked “what do you mean?” or even “how are you?” without so much as turning around.

But since the stars aligned themselves in such a way that his motor skills were dependent on the whims and woes of a man he'd barely exchanged two words with, Fenris found himself silently nurturing a limp as he followed Hawke across campus to meet a dog named Mittens.

“Mitzyyyy,” Hawke cooed, falling on his knees to kiss a wrinkly, hairy snout, “you like the water, buddy? Yeah? Do you like going to water college?”

When Hawke nodded to him, Fenris stepped closer and extended his hand, which was promptly licked by a tongue the size of a large pink rodent. Fenris chuckled in spite of the trail of drool drying along the surface of his gloves – Mittens was gigantic and incredibly floppy, with grey brindled-tan fur that dripped with lake water and a dopey, loving way of leaning on everything he touched.

Fenris glanced down at his massive paws, which were the same color as the rest of him. “Why is he called Mittens?” he asked, grinning stupidly while Hawke's hands drew the dog's jowls up into a smile. Somewhere in the background he could hear Isabela snort in response.

“Sister named him,” said Hawke, quiet. He wriggled Mittens' face back and forth, exposing rows of white shark teeth. “You'll see when it snows.”

“Mittens or your sister?”

Hawke smiled distantly but it wasn't enough to cover the distinct shift in the air between them. Terrified that he somehow managed to get Hawke to hate him by simply petting his dog, Fenris looked over his shoulder and immediately brought his fingertips to his teeth, retrieving his phone from his back pocket with a sorry excuse to leave forming on the tip of his tongue. Isabela cut him off the moment he opened his mouth.

“Mm, you're the quiet type...” She wrapped her wrist with Mittens' leash and walked closer to him, her black eyes sparkling like a desert sky. “Are you taller than me?”

When she got close enough to touch shoes, Fenris took an unintended step back and curled his fingers into the strap of his messenger bag, eyes darting down to the dog panting at his waist. Within seconds Hawke cut in and swung an arm around Isabela's shoulders, turning her around as he bowed his head to whisper something into her ear. Whatever he said to her had to be funny because she pulled back to gape at him through a series of loud, melodic giggles, and Fenris didn't know if the taste in his mouth was the result of relief or envy.

He idly tapped the top of Mittens' wet head as he stood there watching Isabela's fingers loosely graze over Hawke's bicep in a goodbye. _My room mate of like two years,_ he mentally repeated to himself. The weight in his chest didn't lessen. _Room mate of two years, room mate, room—_

“Bye, _Fenwis..._ ” Isabela purred. He froze, nodded, waved a little, caught a glimmer of the honey in Hawke's eyes as he approached with an apology strewn across his face.

“Sorry,” he muttered lowly, making Fenris's skin crawl with its clear, rolling timbre. “She's really touchy-feely but I promise she's great when you get to know her.” Hawke sat down on the seawall with a sigh, drawing a knee up to create a rest for his arm as he turned to crack his spine. “Hey,” he said up to Fenris, squinting. “Everything good?”

Fenris nodded, throat constricted around another apology, but Hawke just shook his head and grinned.

“Wanna get lunch?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> minor revisions made 5/19/2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your feedback. I really, really appreciate it. Things will pick up eventually - I'm adding tags as they're needed!

After work, Fenris came home to two Facebook friend requests – one from Merrill, who’d actually asked his permission to “add him, please” the moment he sat down during their second class together, the other from a “Bel Naishe,” who had several mutual friends and a profile picture of a boat sailing over an inky seascape. That one turned out to be Hawke's room mate, Isabela, but Fenris didn't realize it until after he accepted her request on the grounds of “they know Tally so they have to be moderately decent.”

His mistake.

She messaged him almost immediately, a quick _blip!_ and a dialogue box that said “how tall are you?” taking over the corner of his laptop screen.

Fenris glared at it for a second, weighing the pros and cons of responding to the girl who lived with the guy who strangely occupied the majority of his waking thoughts. Sighing, he set his fraying gloves down on the desk and cautiously typed, “Not sure.” It was true, though somewhere in his wallet was an old identification card that listed his height beneath an address he’d been trying to forget.

_Blip!_

“are you taller than me though?”

Fenris knitted his eyebrows at her eager response. _Does she seriously have nothing better to do?_ “I don't know.”

“k  
well i'm like 5'6 and i come up to hawke's shouldersish  
so do you i think?”

“I'm taller than 5'6.”

“youre small though  
i'm psure youcame up to hawke's shoulders”

“Alright, but I'm taller than 5'6.  
Is Hawke the new standard unit of measurement?”

“well you said you didnt know how tall you were so yeah  
he says hi btw”

Fenris paused in bemusement, typed “Hi.” and minimized that chat window to passively peruse Isabela's timeline, pointedly ignoring the spike in his heart rate.

Lunch with Hawke earlier that day had been interesting. They'd ordered falafel at the campus tavern and their server blushed furiously at everything Hawke said, including “Shh, I got it” when Fenris had tried to pay for his own food. Hawke's debit card had a custom picture of a girl hugging Mittens across the front, and Fenris, nine hours later, still felt unnaturally perturbed by it. Jealous, even.

They’d sat at a shady table outside to eat and make small talk about Professor DuPuis' obvious outer-marriage affair with the dean of the Education department. Hawke was the kind of person who liked to dip the ends of his french fries in everything he possibly could, be it ketchup or tzatziki or a milkshake, and he’d picked most of the tomatoes off his pita before taking his first bite. He also liked to mix his sodas. Apparently root beer and lemonade tasted like Smarties, but Fenris had decided to take his word for it when he was offered a sip, choosing to stick to his Sprite with a mild, sick lurch in the back of his throat.

While interesting, actually talking to Hawke proved worrisome on multiple accounts. For one, Hawke instantly called him out for not finishing his food, which dropped him into a rabbit hole of apologies and nerves that trailed him all the way to work.

Worse, Hawke turned out to be incredibly witty. Funny -- but Fenris knew that by the amount of laughter that followed him everywhere he went. _Sarcastic._ Well-read. He was almost 24, in his second semester of grad school after taking a year off for “family stuff” that Fenris hadn't wanted to pry into. He played music with Isabela, a Gender Studies undergrad who should have finished her program a long time ago, at bars to get their rent paid. He liked IPAs and smoked cigarettes on a mostly social basis. He had quite a few friends, or at least that's what Fenris suspected, because Hawke used “we” far more often than “I”.

Fenris had gone several days assuming that this blooming, harmless crush existed purely on a physical level; Hawke was undoubtedly one of the most attractive people he'd ever crossed paths with. He was tall, exceptionally charismatic and built in a way that made all his shirts look like spilled paint. He smiled a lot, too, the genuine sort of smile that made everybody in the room feel comfortable to be there. Anyone would be attracted to him.

_Blip!_

They'd spent less than an hour together before Fenris had to work, and when he’d walked away it was with a tightness in his chest that prevented him from concentrating on anything but the threads hanging loose from his gloves. The thought of some stranger seeping through his walls left him terrified, but the scariest part was how much he found himself wanting to see Hawke again as soon as he possibly could.

Fenris pulled his leg up onto his chair and rested his chin against his knee. His black denim jeans chafed his skin but it took him a while to notice, knots in his stomach snapping at the sight of a slightly distorted photograph on Isabela’s Timeline. _Blip!_

With a clearing shake of his head, Fenris flicked his gaze back down to his messages:

“he says also to do your homework  
and that page 71 has everything you need  
stop being so quiet!”

“Tell him thanks.  
Sorry.”

Fenris rubbed his eyes after a glance at the time, his hunger announcing itself in the form of an angry rumble. It was well past 10 PM and most of the restaurants on campus were going to close within the hour. His 126 square-foot dorm was no home to any kitchen, but he did use a miniature fridge as a nightstand and in it were several cans of Sprite, peanut butter and half a bag of Thomas’ Bagels. 

“he says youre welcome!  
wanna come over adn chill?”

Fenris froze at that. Yes? Maybe? It was late, though. He'd need a ride. He also had to go to work in the morning and he wasn't sure what strangers did together on a Monday night.

Biting his thumb nail, Fenris stared at the text that said “Bel is typing…” in grey. It disappeared, flickered back, disappeared again.

_Blip!_

“???”

And what if Hawke didn’t want anybody there? Isabela was the one extended the invitation, not him.

...Fenris didn’t like her. She was too pretty, too abrasive, too _touchy-feely_. He wouldn't even know what to say.

Sighing, he typed, “I have to wake up early tomorrow. Good night.” and moved his laptop to his twin-sized bed. He stripped himself of his hoodie, his jeans, his socks, revealing an assortment of pale scrapes that ran in bouts from his chin to his ankles -- there weren't many but the ones there were long, almost white against his naturally tan skin. He'd gotten tattoos over the worst of it, those on his arms and chest, had turned them into intricate linework that didn't hide anything but made them easier to look at while he brushed his teeth in the morning.

Fenris never knew what to do about his hands so he wore gloves for many, many years.

The room was cold as it always was, so he wrapped his giant, fluffy blue comforter around his shoulders as he made himself a quick sandwich, distantly reassuring himself that he made the right choice in declining Isabela's invitation. Five bites later, he collapsed onto his mattress with the intent of skimming articles for his next Sociology of Deviance class, but his eyes immediately fell back to the picture still up on his laptop screen.

It was a dark photo, hazy like the person holding the camera was using the same hand to hold a lit cigarette. Hawke was laying on a red couch with an acoustic guitar partially hidden beneath his legs, dressed in a black t-shirt and a pair of gym shorts, casually reaching back for a can of beer that rested on the hardwood floor by his head. He was looking away from the photographer, presumably his room mate, but his lips were quirked in a semi-smile that twisted around Fenris's chest like smoke.

For the caption Isabela had written “a hawke in its natural habitat”. It had 64 likes. 17 comments. Someone said “baby boy ♥”, another “what! I miss this face so much!”, another “uhhhhh hot damn??”, and each one of them made Fenris's heart drop a notch until he found himself biting back a sudden, watery scowl.

There were other photos of Hawke dispersed throughout her albums too, of him laughing with his arm around different people, laying next to Mittens on a beach, tuning the guitar on a small stage. Sitting on the bow of a sailboat. Getting his nose bitten by Isabela while he balanced a screaming, red-faced Merrill on his back.

Drinking in the snow, in a bar, in a kitchen, on a roof. Hiking. Carrying Mittens up a hill. Driving. Hugging some blonde guy with a blue "happy birthday!" banner hanging in the background. That one had 72 likes.

Fenris restlessly scrolled through Isabela's pictures, their comments, growing angry with himself for caring enough to invade Hawke's life like that, growing even angrier at the unreasonable jealousy that quietly stitched its way beneath his ribs. He felt heavy, controlled. Sick.

Eventually slamming his laptop shut, Fenris wrapped his arms around his pillow without meaning to, feeling more lonely and disappointed than he thought he could over something as pathetic as a public slew of old photographs. He’d enjoyed talking to Hawke. He liked to look at him. It wasn't often that he met someone who held his interest just by _smiling_ , and their conversation had convinced him that they were at least compatible on an acquaintance basis. 

But scanning through Isabela's profile proved that he wasn't the only one to feel that way, didn’t it. There wasn't a single comment, girl or boy, that didn't ooze with untenable affection for him. Someone else even mentioned his laughing eyes.

Of course. Hawke was just one of those people. Anyone would be attracted to him.

–

“Oh my _God_ , let's put marshmallows in it!”

Hawke, Isabela, and Varric crowded around the stove.

“Yeah?” Hawke asked, digging through the pantry for the bag of Jetpuffed Miniatures he bought on their last grocery trip. “Ah! _Ah-ha_! How much?”

“Just put the whole fucking thing in there,” laughed Isabela. “No seriously, just do it.”

Varric grabbed the spatula as Hawke gingerly poured the contents of the bag into the pot. “Faster. No man, it's too runny,” he said. “Don't you guys have corn flakes here?”

Isabela immediately quirked up like a prairie dog. “YES!” she howled, pulling down several boxes of cereal from one of the kitchen shelves.

Tearing open the Cocoa Puffs, Hawke firmly declared, “we’re using these,” and dumped a handful into their science experiment, which made Varric throw his head back in a manic, ominous cackle.

Whatever they made, it was fucking incredible. It’d started as an attempt at fondue per Varric's request ( _his_ bag of Hershey’s, after all), but Hawke added a spoon of almond butter halfway through the cooking process and it inspired Isabela to stomp on a bag of pretzels to “decorate” it with. Then Varric's inner culinary pioneer came out with bananas and two-month-old caramel syrup, and the rest was a blur of processed sugar and bad decisions.

“God, I fucking love carbs,” Isabela moaned, spreading it onto a slice of cinnamon toast straight from the pot before she disappeared, half-smoked bowl in hand.

Hawke snorted. “Where's the broom—wait, never mind, got it—”

He swept the kitchen floor, scraped the contents of the pot into an empty tupperware container and did most of the dishes before he heard Isabela call out,

“Wittle Fenwis is my Facebook fwiend!”

“Wait, what?”

“Aww, look how precious!”

Hawke turned off the faucet and wiped his wet hands on his shorts, heading into the living room where Isabela held up a picture of Fenris standing in front of a snow-capped city bridge.

Hawke halted with a breathless smile. “ _Aw,_ ” he muttered and carefully took the bowl and Isabela's chocolate-smeared laptop to get a better look. ‘Precious’ wasn't the word he would’ve used for anything, but Fenris was definitely _something_ – what, Hawke didn't know.

He was suited for snow. He was suited for a lot of things. His green eyes managed to drill holes into Hawke's skin even through the confines of an LCD screen.

Varric stood next to him to see what the fuss was about, but Hawke was already handing the computer back to Isabela. “Don't scare him away,” he told her, blowing smoke over his shoulder before passing the bowl over, too.

She giggled. “Is he taller than me?”

“Why is that important?” Hawke groaned. He pressed his fingers into his eyes the moment she started typing. “Oh god. What're you saying to him?”

“I want to know how tall he is.”

“Please don't. Isabela.”

Varric knelt down next to her and said, “who's taller than you?”

“Not you,” Isabela bit, laughing. “No, this guy we met. Look how cute he is.”

“Uh.”

Hawke began to pace around the living room with his stomach performing its most impressive backflips and his dog quickly followed his lead. “Is he actually responding to you?” Hawke asked. Mittens huffed behind him and barked at his ankles, so he placed a gentle hand on the back of his giant head to quiet him. “Shh, Mitzy.”

“Yeah. He's kind of a dick...”

“ _Total_ dick,” Varric agreed. “He's barely saying shit.”

 _I wouldn’t either_ , Hawke thought, distant, grinning. “Tell him I said hi.”

Isabela clacked away at her keyboard. She stood up and walked back to the kitchen with her laptop in her arms, shortly reappearing with the container of Chocolate Garbage and a spoon, lips smacking stickily as she stated, “he says hi.”

“Tell him to do his homework. Also page 71 is super important, but I don't know if I'm allowed to tell him that.”

Varric looked up at him with a mischievous, knowing glint in his eye and used his fingers to scoop a marshmallow-coated pretzel from the side of the container on Isabela's lap. “Get your Facebook back so you can tell him yourself,” he taunted, smirking.

“Ha, nope.”

Isabela leaned over to giggle something into Varric's ear. His eyes widened for a second before he whispered back to her, nodding his head and glaring up his nose at Hawke.

Isabela clapped and rubbed her hands together. “Okay so I'm inviting him here.”

Hawke paused mid-step, his heart suddenly leaping into his mouth. “Yeah? Do it,” he replied instantly, slightly rough, which made Isabela and Varric crack in hysterical laughter. Mittens snorted at them and followed Hawke when he retreated to the bathroom.

Hawke let his dog in, muttering something about personal boundaries before he brushed his teeth to get the taste of resin off his tongue. Fenris was going to decline. He didn't seem like the kind of person who'd openly accept an invitation to go to a house full of people he didn't know, no matter how many stray thoughts of _he knows me, though_ crept into Hawke's head.

“He said no!” shouted Isabela from the living room, and Hawke nodded unsurprised into the sink. Of course he did. “Aww! I think I scared him away!” He nodded again -- of course she did.

Hawke spat, grabbed a towel and left the bathroom, accidentally locking Mittens in on his way out. Upon receiving an apology, Mittens dismissively huffed and marched into Isabela's bedroom where he curled up on the floor with his back to Hawke in a melodramatic display of offense.

“Aw really, buddy?” Hawke complained, smiling. He padded back into the living room and sat shoulder-to-shoulder with his roommate, who was in the process of snooping the shit out of Fenris's personal life like a total fucking asshole.

“He likes the books you like,” she purred, idly flipping through his interests (he didn't list many) while sucking on her spoon. “Mmm, and he draws really good.”

“Yeah,” Hawke muttered, resting his head on his knee as he reached over to Isabela's glass of wine. “Ahhh, c’mon, don’t lurk’m...”

Isabela snickered, confused. “Why?”

Hawke shrugged and took a sip, waving goodbye as Varric let himself out the front door. “Cuz you're gonna freak him out.”

“Oh, please,” she rolled her eyes. “Oh my God look at this fucking picture. No way he's a virgin. Fucking _look at it._ ”

Hawke coughed violently as wine spilled across the carpet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter revised 5/19/2016 but it's still annoying so

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading. This chapter annoys me so I'll probably edit it later. Shout out to my best friend who just dropped out of her graduate psych program (do you, beeb).

_Stop it._

The room was vaguely illuminated by the glow of a courtyard lamp, air thick with cicada chirps and an echo of a scream that Fenris didn't immediately recognize as his. He bolted upright against his art-covered wall, drawing his knees up high and tight against his chest as he blinked away beams of sweat. Somewhere in the background his phone hummed a faint “4:22 AM” but Fenris's eyes remained closed. There would be no more sleep.

He wiped his face. Those were tears. He hid his eyes in the shelter of his arms, swallowing gasps and mouthing pleas to the shadows on his floor as they contorted like vicious ghosts toward him. Hours later, when the confusion settled, when his breathing regulated, Fenris unclenched his fists to reveal a new string of gashes, etched like crescent epitaphs into the lines of his palms.

–

Fenris picked a relatively dry nacho from the plate between him and Hawke, knitting his eyebrows in contemplation as he watched shapes stretch in the negative space within the cheese. “But the behavior would then be deemed appropriate,” he mumbled, head bowed in hesitation, a flicker of sunlight in Hawke's eyes rendering him suddenly incapable of speech. “Er. Would it not?”

“Yeeeah, but you're thinking in social terms,” Hawke grinned, relaxed with his hands folded over an errant piece of paper, “which I guess you're kinda forced to do after you're exposed to like, looking glass theory and shit.” He laughed quickly before piling a bunch of jalapenos onto a chip. “But the point I'm tryin'a make is that 'appropriate' is irrelevant. Like—hmm. Okay, it's counseling territory, but if a behavior causes distress it _really_ doesn't matter if it's normal in Siberia.”

Nodding slowly, Fenris wiped his fingertips on a napkin. He frowned when he saw sour cream on the edge of his gloves and wiped them again, harder. “Why do you TA in Social Psych if your concentration is in Cognition?”

“Pfft, because all psych is social. Honestly I don't know what Sociology even is except a limit for future employment.”

Fenris covered his face and beamed up at Hawke through his the gaps between his fingers. “Thanks,” he chuckled, slightly embarrassed, “I am on a trail of debt for naught.”

“Me too. We should've taken Basket Weaving.” Hawke held up a finger as he shook his soda cup, its leftover ice vacantly rattling inside. He muttered “gimme a sec” and Fenris felt the color drain from his cheeks when Hawke nonchalantly picked his mostly-empty cup up on the way to the tavern door, too. “Sprite, right?” he asked, but he didn't wait for Fenris's affirmation before disappearing inside.

This was the third consecutive week in which Fenris agreed to get lunch with Hawke after class, but it was the first time that he'd purposely lingered in front of the lecture hall to wait for him under the guise of talking to Merrill. She’d seemed to notice how anxiously he glanced at the door though, because when Hawke finally emerged with his strong arms buried beneath the weight of fifty maximized file folders, she smiled sweetly, mewled “see you next week, Fenris, bye bye” and scurried down the hall before he had the chance to politely excuse himself.

Hawke had shouted “MERRILL! COME OVER LATER! I HAVE YOUR— _or not_ ,” before he dropped a stack of papers, looked down at them with a shrug and kicked them into a low vent in the wall. Fenris had laughed at that. Then he lied about liking sour cream on his nachos just to get Hawke to invite him to the tavern again.

“Hey, actually,” Hawke said as he sat back down, placing their newly-filled sodas onto the table. Fenris thought he sounded like he was walking barefoot on the edge of a frozen lake.

He hesitantly reached for his drink, growing moderately concerned at the sudden restless bounce in Hawke's feet. “Are you al—”

“You're brilliant, right?”

Fenris paused at what he supposed was a compliment, cup of Sprite suspended an inch from his mouth and splashing in time with his speeding heartbeat. “I-I do—” he stuttered, but Hawke waved a hand to stop him again.

“I think I'm teaching all four October classes and I want you to help me plan them.”

The statement knocked the wind out of Fenris's lungs. “A-am I allowed to do that?” he asked, internally priding himself for his automatic composure as he watched Hawke's hands stray back to the plate between them.

“I dunno. Probably not,” Hawke shoved a couple of nachos into his mouth with a superfluous grin. “Who cares!”

It came out sounding like _whm cayrf_.

Fenris's eyes dropped. The warning bells in his stomach began to chime.

“I do not think it's a good idea, Hawke. Sorry." He wrung his brain for every excuse he could possibly use to dissuade Hawke from pressing his request, but they all sounded benign the moment they rolled off his tongue. "I have a lot of other-- er, other classes, a job...” .

The truth was that Fenris would have loved to help him. In addition to being versed in general social theory, Hawke seemed to know every single staff member of the Arts and Sciences department by their first names. Working with him would allow for a possible _in_. Over the four weeks of their acquaintance, Fenris had seen him chatting with several professors in their open offices, on the seawall bordering Lake La Salle, in front of the coffee shop. He'd even made brief eye-contact with him after a night class while he was seated, beer in hand, next to the university's provost.

Sighing, Fenris used his nails to peel at the rolled edge of his paper soda cup. Agreeing to Hawke's request also meant that he'd be spending more than an hour a week alone with him. It was a thought that sent his pulse ramming fiercely from his heart to his ankles, and for that very reason he knew he had to decline.

But then he looked up from his gloves to lock onto the despondent yet accepting smile currently playing on Hawke's angled, confident face, and like all of their scholastic debates and the walls he worked so hard to build, Fenris found himself drastically reevaluating his decisions. _How does he take “no” so well?_

Deflating, Fenris nodded while he dipped a tortilla chip into the puddle of salsa verde on their plate. The bells turned into sirens but still he sighed, “alright.” _No._ “Alright.”

“Really?” The table shook as Hawke dropped his elbows onto its surface, his relief tangible and trickling in warm beads against Fenris's skin.

“Yes.”

“Agh! Awesome! Okay,” Hawke shone as he leaned forward to catch the napkin that threatened to fly off the table. When he sat back again, he immediately quirked his eyebrows in an expressive apology and reached across the table to touch Fenris’s arm, but he halted before he made contact, as if suddenly realizing who he's been sharing a plate of Nachos Supremos with for the last thirty-one minutes. “Aw, Fenris. You sure?”

Fenris exhaled, staring down at the curve of Hawke's fingers as they fell inches away from his sleeve. He had the overwhelming urge to grab them before they retreated so he coiled his own hands together in his lap instead. “Sure.”

“I swear I won't let it get in the way of anything.”

“It is fine.” A silence fell over them and left Fenris fidgeting, uncomfortable, darting his gaze up at the faces of students herding past their table. One of them, a well-built blonde man from some of Isabela's Facebook pictures, paused to wrap an arm around Hawke's neck in a loose and silent acknowledgment as he walked by.

“Hey man,” Hawke greeted lowly, patting the person's wrist.

Fenris's heart leapt as he watched the concerned way that Hawke lifted his chin up to ask, “everything alright?” when the stranger retracted his arm. He nodded glumly, scratching his brow.

Fingers tightening together, Fenris scowled down at his frayed gloves. Hawke had a nice jawline. His beard was trimmed short, his hair just long enough to graze at the subtle arch of his dark eyebrows, his mouth slackening its brilliant smile -- Fenris hated himself for the unnecessary bout of jealousy that begged the stranger to _leave them alone_.

“Poor guy,” he heard Hawke mutter into his cup after his friend finally left. Fenris forced a smile and allowed himself to pry.

“Is he alright?” _Who is he?_

Hawke winced through a see-sawing nod. “His cat got out last week,” he said. “Actually, he lives by the Med school so lemme know if you see an orange tabby somewhere.”

The Medical dorms were almost a mile away. “Alright.” _Why does everyone touch you?_

Just then, Fenris's phone started to vibrate and he realized with creeping dread that he'd recently agreed to cover the last hour of Tally's shift. “I have to go to work,” he muttered quickly, lidding his cup as he stood up from his chair. Papers scattered everywhere. “Sorry! Sorry. Er. Do you need my e-mail address?”

“Nah, I've got the whole section's,” Hawke laughed, shaking his head. “Your number works, though.”

Fenris stilled as Hawke casually removed his phone from his back pocket and waited patiently for a response. Then he found himself reciting ten digits without a single stutter, and when his own phone vibrated again he quietly unlocked it to a message from an unfamiliar, local number.

Try as he might, he couldn't suppress the smile that tugged at his lips when he read the text:

“ _Woof_ ”

–

Hawke immediately saved Fenris's number to his contacts and put his phone away, positively fucking glowing about the idea of his entire life getting a hell of a lot easier via the support of a kid whose green eyes, slowly but surely, punctured a permanent path through his thoughts.

“Where do you work?” he asked, grinning wide and following the rushed movements of Fenris's gloves as they checked over pockets and papers.

“Josie's Books on 8th. Is my wall—oh, s-sorry. Thank you.”

Hawke handed him the wallet that laid beneath a few thinning file folders. He made a mental note to pitch them on his way out ( _we have technology now, DuPuis_ ) as he cracked his knuckles against his palms. “Josie's? Ha! Tally still there?”

Fenris nodded frantically, glancing at the clock on his phone. It had a dark blue case. “Yes. I am actually about to cover her, if I can catch the bus on time. Sorry.”

Hawke widened his grin again because Fenris looked so fucking panicked and exhausted and he was doing that thing where he said sorry for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Instead of asking his usual _why're you apologizing?_ which would probably cause Fenris to apologize again, Hawke simply stood up, stretched his arms over his head and yawned,

“I'll drive you to work.”

It took a solid two minutes to convince Fenris that he wasn't an inconvenience by any definition of the word. Hawke practically had to drag by him by his messenger bag to the Arts and Sciences lot where he'd spitefully parked in DuPuis' favorite spot, repeating “I'm not arguing about this” and “you already missed the bus” several times before Fenris huffed and followed in cautious surrender.

When they finally reached his old, red Jeep Cherokee, Hawke had to solemnly _promise_ that he wouldn't have offered to give him a ride if he didn't want to.

...He also had to pitch a plethora of old soda cans, Nature Valley wrappers, t-shirts, three books and Mittens' old-ass leash to the backseat so Fenris could actually have a place to sit.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, Hawke switched on the radio and handed Fenris his iPod without looking over. “Choose something,” he stated, smirking at Fenris’s immediate hesitation before he flicked down both their visors to block the sunlight that ricocheted off the Prius in front.

He turned his signal on and leaned back in his chair, growing more endeared with Fenris's covered hands as they slowly navigated the click wheel in the corner of his eye. Choosing the music in his Jeep was a very honorable privilege that Hawke granted to almost no one, but he was curious to know what kind of music Fenris liked and thought the question was way too boring to ask. He also knew it’d annoy him, and when Lucero poured through the speakers his mouth tore into a jaw-numbing grin.

It widened when the song immediately switched to PiL, but Fenris quietly muttered “sorry”, pressing himself as close to the passenger door as he could. Hawke did everything in his power to refrain from leaning his entire body against the horn and shouting _YOU'RE DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT!_ at the top of his lungs.

The music changed again to Johnny Cash and Hawke barked out a laugh as Fenris dropped the iPod like hot coal and sat on his hands.

“I can do Johnny,” he cooed. The light turned green and the cars in front of him began to turn. He started to say, “we play this song sometimes," but stopped to beat his fists on his steering wheel because the person driving the Prius was obviously blind. "Wow, can you _go_? Ohmygodit'sgreenpleasejust—thank you!”

Fenris hesitantly reached over to the volume knob. “Do you only play guitar or...?” he asked, voice trailing off at the end. Hawke assumed he was about to apologize for touching his radio, so he glanced over at him and warmly, gently urged, "you're okay, Fenris."

He caught the beginnings of a blush on Fenris's tan cheeks before turning his attention back to the road. Over the past couple of weeks, Fenris had started to talk more often, asking questions on his own accord and actually giving lengthy answers to the vague can-I-please-know-you questions that Hawke occasionally posed to him, too. It was nice to see that he was at least marginally relaxed despite all his fidgeting, and the more he opened up, the more Hawke wanted to learn more.

“Uh, mostly guitar," he backtracked, shaking his head, "and piano, sorta. We have weird things like banjoleles and violas that Bel likes to fuck with." Hawke shrugged and chanced another glance at Fenris's profile. He was squinting too; the angle in which he sat made his eyes look almost yellow. “Do you play anything?”

“No.”

Hawke nodded. “But you can draw.” _And write. And you wear gloves in August, and September, and you'll probably wear them in October too. And the sun makes—_

“Er. Hawke?”

“Yeah?”

“Excuse me if this question is out of bounds—” _It's probably not_ , Hawke thought with a laugh, “--but I thought you took the bus to school.”

 _Oh._ “I do,” replied Hawke casually. He instantly knew where that was going. “Are you about to ask why I don't drive more?”

Fenris nodded a little in his periphery.

Hawke paused as he pulled up in front of Josie's. “I drive a lot.” He leaned forward to check his side mirrors before he finished a (very impressive) parallel parking job. Turning to Fenris, he continued, “I think I really just like taking the bus.”

Fenris squirmed a little, his eyes sort of wide like they were able to visually detect the lie in Hawke's words. “Oh, alright,” he rasped, sounding almost Merrill-ish in how easily he let the topic go unpressed. Hawke felt like hugging him for it. “Thank you for driving me.”

“You're welcome,” Hawke smiled. Fenris remained seated, small, his hands in fists at his sides and his shoulders stiff in an adorable demonstration of uncertainty. “Tell Tally I said 'big burrito' and that Bel has been talking endless shit about her for not texting back.”

“I probably will not do that, Hawke.”

–

Later that night, Hawke flung himself down onto his bed and laid his head against Mittens, who was sleeping soundly across all three of his newly-washed pillows. The house was chillingly empty because Isabela decided to go for a drunken jog around the neighborhood (at fucking midnight) to “make room in her thighs for all the pumpkin-flavored stuff next month,” so the evening was spent cleaning up the living room while listening to his sister’s old records.

The excitement of Hawke's day seriously declined after he dropped Fenris off at work. He'd wanted to come in to say hi to Tally (and see Fenris out of the contexts of class and lunch), but he had to drive back to campus to grade stuff before the start of his four-hour graduate seminar on Psychopathology. If it wasn't for the blossoming routine of eating with Fenris after DuPuis' class, Mondays would be the worst day of his week.

Merrill did end up coming over to pick up a package that she’d sent to Hawke's address. She lived in a really shady part of town and didn't trust her neighbors not to steal her mail while she was out; Hawke tried many times to get her to move in with someone, anyone, just to get her out of the high crime zone, but she insisted on baking cookies for the local crack dealers to earn a space in their hearts. It seemed to work in her favor because her scooter was stolen _and promptly returned to her_ six times over the past three years.

Now Hawke was skimming through his e-mail and frowning at all the late submissions from students in his section. He scratched the back of his neck and, after realizing that the itch came from the tag on his collar, peeled his off his shirt, flinging it to the laundry basket across the room. Mittens let out a snort beneath his head as he stretched and Hawke chuckled in response, adjusting his weight to better suit the comfort of his spoiled dog even though he could totally handle the extra ten pounds.

After he politely responded to some sophomore's e-mail regarding an assignment due two weeks prior, it occurred to Hawke that he hadn't actually _thanked_ Fenris for helping him put his October lesson plans together, especially since he'd initially declined.

Feeling like a horrible ass, Hawke opened his texts and typed “Thanks for agreeing to help, night” in a message addressed to Fenris. He sent it quickly, but when he realized that it was nearing one in the morning he dropped his phone onto his head and pressed his fingertips into his eyes.

Feeling like an even bigger, more horrible ass for sending uninvited texts to the world at such a socially unacceptable time on a Monday night, Hawke sat up, changed into a pair of black gym shorts and flicked the lights off in time to hear his phone chirp against his bed sheets.

He paused as he watched his phone display go blank again, chalking his skipped heartbeat up to being faced with the embarrassment of a regrettable text. Laying back down, he planted a quick kiss to the side of Mittens’ snout and opened Fenris’s response.

“It was really no problem, Hawke.”

Hawke swallowed and knitted his eyebrows together, allowing his curiosity to take advantage of Fenris's availability.

“Im sorry for waking you up with that”

A few seconds went by before his phone chirped again. “You did not wake me up.”

“Thank god. Always up this late?” Hawke typed. He immediately locked his phone and placed it face-down on the floor. It chirped again, almost instantly, but Hawke gave himself a moment of rubbing his eyes before he checked.

“No. I can't sleep. Yourself?”

“Usually in bed by 2ish” he sent. Then he paused and added, “Why cant you sleep?”

There was a really, really long gap after that message that forced Hawke to roll on his stomach and groan his remorse into the musky folds of Mittens' fur, but then his door swung open and revealed the sweaty silhouette of Isabela, dressed in a faded crop top and drenched yoga pants, her black hair tangled in a loose knot at the top of her head and her dark skin glistening in the vacant light of the rest of the house.

“Does my ass look ANY smaller?” she barked, doing exaggerated lunges into his bedroom.

Before he managed to say anything, Isabela mumbled “never mind, good fucking night” and dramatically slammed the door behind her. Hawke stared at the doorknob for a long, incredulous moment before reaching over to check his phone again. It chirped the moment he touched it.

“I just can't.”

With a slow sigh, Hawke nodded and turned his phone on silent, connected it to its charger and placed it on the red surface of his hand-painted nightstand. He shifted to his side and idly ran his fingers over Mittens' fat, sleeping face, wondering what it was about the color green that made it so hard to think about anything else.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter revised 5/20/2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you all for reading. This is another annoying chapter that I'll find time to edit another day.
> 
> Warning: there is a fair amount of Planned Parenthood talk. I support the shit out of Planned Parenthood. And implied atheism.

Over the couple of weeks that followed, Fenris proved to be everything Hawke had wanted in a planning buddy. He lent an air of clarity to the lesson plans by drawing on concepts from the few Sociology classes he'd taken, bringing light to Socratic lesson structures that Hawke hadn't even bothered to consider. He played the guinea pig in a mock lecture about Conformity and Compliance that they held together at a local cafe and his focused nature was a fucking blessing. He often caught Hawke off-guard by posing questions that DuPuis would probably ask during his end-of-semester evaluation, including shit that would prepare him for a Lab position next term, and even did some _early reading_ just so Hawke wouldn't have to waste time debriefing him on the material.

They met up every Monday for lunch and every Wednesday after Fenris's work shift for late sessions at the cafe, totaling six meetings before Hawke's first class as a student instructor. He felt bad about it; the timing fell around that of first exams and Fenris had shyly mentioned that he’d been falling behind in his Deviance course. He didn’t accept Hawke’s offer to help.

Some time after their second academic meeting together, when they were both well past the normal state of exhaustion and cackling at every stupid thing that crossed their minds, it became very clear to Hawke that he was able to talk to Fenris in a way he couldn't with most anyone else. The melody of Fenris's laugh was contagious and seemed to stick to Hawke's skin like rain, filtering muffled through his gloves, his perpetually calm demeanor broken in spite of the distance he kept on the edge of his words. They didn't drink together because Fenris was twenty-years-old and too nervous to let people order him a beer in public where (God forbid) someone might see, but his unusual qualities managed to intoxicate the shit out of Hawke anyway, leaving him dizzied, lighthearted and unfathomably amused.

It took less than a week for their professional text-based relationship to morph into “good morning”s and “whatcha doing?”s (both on Hawke's account, as Fenris was a hell of a lot more eloquent than that) and by the time the temperature outside started to drop, they'd solidified a friendship based solely on the principle that Fenris wouldn't be old enough to drink until October 21st.

Hawke's first class ran sort of smoothly. He fucked up and accidentally swore like an asshole during a citation about Dynamical Systems, which made the whole lecture hall erupt in giggles, but the undergrads seemed to catch on to the basic-ass material just fine. Fenris didn't participate much but every few minutes Hawke caught a shimmering glint of green from across the room, and he grinned at it, biting back the leaps in his pulse that seemed to be occurring more and more frequently.

Relieved, he bowed slightly at the end of his lecture and blew a kiss to Merrill when she stood up to applaud him, her face bright and oblivious to the glares that stabbed her from every corner of the room.

–

The next day, Isabela woke him up at the crack of dawn by slamming on his bedroom door and screaming “WE HAVE TO GO TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD!” in the shrillest voice she could've possibly mustered.

Hawke, scared shitless by the volume, immediately threw his arms around Mittens. “ _What?_ ” he wheezed. “Fuck, dude, it's not even 7 yet--”

Isabela paced the doorway with her hands tangled in her messy, unwashed hair. “Hawke,” she plead, “I've been awake all night reading for my Problems and Practices exam and then I got to chapter 6 and realized that I've gone 25 years of my life without getting tested for HIV.”

Hawke groaned and collapsed back onto his pillow. “You’re 25?” he yawned, groggily shoving his face into Mittens to block out the light that Isabela turned on. “Bel, go to sleep. You don’t have HIV.”

“I'M NOT SAYING I DO, HAWKE!” She yelled, flipping the switch until his room looked like a middle school rave. “But I have a fleshy lump in my throat and WebMD says it's HPV because I have unprotected oral sex—”

“WebMD? Did Merrill tell y—”

“Yes! No! _FUCK_ MERRILL! I NEED TO GO _NOW_!”

“Then gooo,” Hawke deliriously sobbed into his dog. “Go to Planned Parenthood when it opens—”

“You're coming with me.”

“Nope.”

“Yes you are. Hawke. Please, like...”

She sounded like she was about to cry so Hawke sighed, defeated, and lifted his head to look at her.

“Just. You're my best guy friend and guys are so bad about sexual health and _I will not let you go the rest of your life not knowing if you have Syphilis._ ”

And that's how Hawke found himself dressed in torn gym shorts and an old blue button-up, driving Isabela's beaten-up Ford Crown Victoria across town with two Dunkin Donuts coffees nestled haphazardly between their seats.

Isabela spent the entire ride binge-calling Varric, who not only ignored her but eventually turned off his phone. “Varric, it's me,” she said calmly into what Hawke guessed was his voicemail. “Listen, we're going to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases and I think you should too. I read an article about the growing prevalence of transmission among 21st century youth and it's really important that you take care of yourself. I love you so, so much. Please stay safe. Love you.”

“ _STDs_ , Isabela,” Hawke grumbled through a tired grin. “Like, nobody calls them 'sexually transmitted diseases' anymore. He probably won't even know what you're talking about.” Glancing over for a brief moment, he winced at the dark circles under her eyes, convinced that she wouldn't have had such a visceral compulsion to get tested if she'd just slept for an hour last night.

Isabela contorted her mouth into a toothy frown before she snapped, “maybe if they started using the whole thing, people would think before having promiscuous drunken sex,” and folded her arms in her sweater like an angry toddler on her way to preschool.

Laughing, Hawke pulled into a spot in the deserted Planned Parenthood parking lot. Isabela's car steered like a boat. “Yep, just like saying 'Voldemort' gave Hermione the courage to stand up to him.”

In all honesty, he was proud of her for taking initiative, and though sunrise on a Tuesday morning wouldn't have been his first choice to go he saw the logic in getting himself tested, too. He’d gone through several partners and boxes of Trojans, even fell into a cycle of “drunken promiscuity” during a particularly dark time at the end of his undergrad career when waking up in strange beds became routine and migraines only ceased after three shots of whiskey and missing socks reappeared in his mailbox, occasionally attached to a note. Still, two years of sharing a wall with Isabela proved that his sexual track record couldn’t hold a candle to _anything_ ; Hawke slung an affectionate arm around her shoulder as they hurried across the concrete.

Planned Parenthood didn't even fucking open until 9AM (“God damn it,” Isabela sobbed up at the building. “What if I was on the verge of _dying_?”), so they spent almost two hours arguing about the difference between Thin-tensity and Ultra Thin condoms while seated on the hood of her car. She won, but only after admitting that one smelled grosser than the other.

When the doors finally opened, Hawke stuffed his hands in his mesh pockets and followed Isabela into the clinic where he was promptly guided to a separate room. “Good luck,” he sang, grinning when she responded, “likewise, love you.”

The lady who saw him was old and serene, a little smug, with white hair tied in a neat bun at the back of her head. She was pretty nice until she took his blood pressure and hit him with a slew of intrusive questions about his convoluted sexual preference and visual state of his dick –  
“No,” Hawke sighed, nervous, pushing his sleeves up his forearms. “I haven't experienced any of that.”

“Sounds good,” said the lady. “How many partners have you had?”

For a second Hawke imagined what Fenris would be like in this situation and had to suppress a chuckle; Fenris would’ve probably died long before he finished writing his name on the sign-in sheet.

He dropped his face to his hands before responding, “I have no idea,” smiling sleepy and half-embarrassed against his palms

“Alright, Garrett,” she dismissed, pausing before she added a warm, “that's a nice name. It suits you. You said you've had relations with females? Or males?”

Hawke grabbed a fistful of his own hair. “Uh, both?” he asked, anxious, laughing. “Neither? Mostly girls, I gue—”

“Are you here for a specific test?”

“ _No,_ I’m here because Bel went cr--” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “May I please just get all of them?”

Moments later, Hawke was shoved into a pink, seashell-wallpapered bathroom with three empty containers and a lukewarm bottle of Kirkland water. Of course his bladder, once given a deadline, decided to retain as much as it could, so he leaned against a painting of a peony and frowned at the lingering scent of lemon Clorox rising from the floor beneath his shoes.

 _I hope Isabela can never piss again,_ he thought idly, lifting the water bottle to his mouth as he opened his chirping phone to a stack of Christian fiction novels, after which Fenris had sent, “Shelved these today. Thought of you.”

Hawke’s chest twisted slightly. They’d spent most of yesterday’s meeting coming up with tacky titles for Mormon romances after seeing someone drop a book called _Tears of the Moon_ down the outside staircase, an exchange which continued through the night by way of sporadic texts. Most recent was “My Own Mr. Darcy” sent by Fenris at 4:11 AM and Hawke still couldn’t stop laughing about it.

“Oh god, im sorry” he typed, snorting. “Can i spill something on it?”

_Chirp!_

“Yes, please. How are you?”

A chemical-lemon smile worked its way onto his mouth. Fenris had been initiating their conversations a lot more often than he used to. It was nice. Really, really nice. Hawke debated telling him about how he was standing in the middle of a Planned Parenthood bathroom trying to piss next to a bouquet of racy orchids because Isabela really wanted him to, but settled for “Pretty tired. Hows work?” instead.

_Chirp!_

“It’s good. Tally sends her regards.”

“Hi tally. Big burrito”

Shoving his phone into his pocket, Hawke decided to stop by Josie’s Books as soon as he was free to leave the bathroom. _Oh, right, fuck,_ he thought, remembering his duty with a forlorn gaze to the open toilet below. It was filled with the same blue stuff his mother started to use after her 45th birthday, the kind that looked like Windex and turned fluorescent green right before it got flushed. Carver once said something about how it reminded him of Razz-Apple Fun Dip and he’d been _totally_ right.

Hawe gagged and turned on the faucet for a modicum of inspiration. He stuck his tongue out at his reflection, jogged in place, banged his head against a decal of a cowrie and audibly bargained peace treaties with his bladder, who still refused to cooperate with an iron will. He paced in lolling circles around pretty-pink tiles, hummed the bridge of Isabela’s latest mandolin solo while he sipped the last drops from the bottom of the bottle. Smoke materialized from a little white box on the linen shelf, filling the bathroom air with a haze of low tide, jasmine, amber, and clean laundry. Curious, Hawke leaned in close to read the brand and accidentally swallowed its next jet.

“ _'Seaside Escape_?'” he coughed, “are you kidding?”

Five minutes of ironic prayer and an endless supply of swears later, he managed to leave the bathroom with his mission diligently accomplished. He returned to his room in a triumphant gallop, sample cups uncomfortably warm in his hands despite being wrapped in several layers of fancy toilet paper, his teeth bared in a self-satisfied grin until he reached the doorway and saw the suggestive assembly line of needles and a container of oversized cotton swabs.

The clinician watched him with a very empathetic smile, allowing him to sit down before she calmly stated,

“Two tests require us to draw blood. You’ll get the results tomorrow or Thursday.”

“Okay,” he said, slow, eyes falling in horror upon a giant Q-tip resting on the edge of the counter. “Are you planning to do anything with _that_?”

“Not if the cups are full.”

 

Isabela was a grouch the whole ride home. Apparently she went 25 years of her life never getting a pap smear, either, and she didn't hesitate to describe the experience in morbid detail, claiming that they clawed parts of her body that she didn't know existed before that day. Hawke took the liberty of setting an alarm for her when she passed out, face-down, on their living room couch.

After granting Mittens his well-awaited Walk Time Oh God, Hawke threw his textbooks into his rucksack and drove over to Josie's Books where Fenris was probably scowling at a King James Bible way back in the reference section. When he walked into the store, he quickly scanned his surroundings, eyes resting briefly on the back of Tally's head before they found the small, broody figure they were looking for.

Hawke smirked.

It wasn't the King James version, but Fenris was definitely scowling down at a bible in the back. Hawke leaned against the nearest shelf and folded his arms across his chest, watching the sharp profile of his face as it shifted through three different states of emotion while his gloved hands carefully moved across the page.  
.  
He really liked it when Fenris didn't have his hood up. He could see his neck and the subtle jut of his collarbones above the zipper, tan and marred with the faint traces of scars that he’d probably never ask about. He could see his hair too, bright like a winter morning, strands soft across his cheekbones, his brow, eyes. Hawke found himself aching just to brush it out of his face.

He animatedly cleared his throat and announced “I want service,” and Fenris snapped his head up so fast that Hawke felt inclined to ask if his neck was alright.

“I-it's fine,” Fenris said, seemingly out of breath. “How long have you been standing there?”

“ _Hours_. When're you off?”

Fenris quickly replaced the book on its shelf and looked up at the cat-shaped clock behind them. “Noon,” he stated, tilting his head slightly. “Twenty minutes.”

Grinning, Hawke started toward the store’s cafe where Tally puttered in circles around her shelving cart. “Lemme know when you're done.”

He ordered a red-eye and collapsed into the armchair next to Tally -- Fenris’s manager, what even -- to give her shit about ignoring Isabela after their extremely loud and _incredibly close_ night back in August. She snorted, rolled her eyes, and asked him why he looked like he just crawled out of an elementary compost bin.

At the sound of another _chirp!_ , Hawke pulled his phone from of his mesh pocket, knitting his eyebrows as Fenris's name appeared across the screen.

“I have class at 2.”

 _I know._ “Ill drive you”

He glanced up, eyes only, to Fenris shaking his head at him from across the store. Smiling to himself, Hawke typed “Not arguing about it” and casually ignored his phone for the remainder of the shift.

–

Hawke had an unsettling habit of surprising Fenris all the time, even the days on which they'd specifically planned to meet. There was no explanation for it. At just under 6'2 Hawke was fairly hard to miss, and his charismatic nature cued an overture to his arrival through the reminiscent sighs and giggles from everybody in his immediate area.

He wasn't particularly light on his feet either, yet Fenris still managed to have a coronary every time he arrived.

Fenris would be lying if he said he didn't occasionally daydream about Hawke studying on the bookstore floor during his shifts—the direct result of being alone with him over bottomless pitchers of Masala chai, surely—but he never anticipated him showing up, unannounced, on a Tuesday morning two hours after their most recent text exchange.

He didn’t want to see Hawke anymore. He really didn’t. He recalled with perfect clarity the night on which he realized he’d been opening up in ways he’d soon regret, seated at the campus cafe, books cast aside in favor of a conversation about something as mundane as the moon. It had been 11 at night. A Wednesday. They both had classes in the morning and Hawke had just ordered another round of highly caffeinated tea from the barista who liked to call him “Lovely Bones”.

With most people, Fenris had the tendency to remain distant and reserved, a quality that he'd spent the better part of his life striving to achieve. With Hawke, however, he found himself leaning over the table with his mouth cracked in a wayward smile, talking animatedly about craters as if they were the answers to every question the world had ever asked.

It was foreign. Terrifying. Hawke was an adrenaline rush, a dangerous breaking of the rules, someone with whom people fell in love and cried about before they slept. Fenris reminded himself of this often, when he'd scroll past another one of Isabela's pictures or reach for his phone to eagerly answer a text. _How could they not?_

Somehow over the course of six meetings – at picnic tables sharing a cigarette, on cafe sofas surrounded by Social Theory articles and pens long dried out – somehow his control began to slip, and the years of careful tailoring that he prided himself for unraveled right before his eyes.

When the clock struck noon, Fenris shook his lanyard off and walked to break room. He lingered at the table to compose himself because the several minutes between Hawke's texts afforded him plenty of time to work himself up into a ball of denial and instability, and by the time he clocked out he had successfully compiled a list of dull excuses to take the bus: _I have to meet with someone,_ he repeated. _Tally wants me to stay later. My class was canceled. My professor is coming by._

He sighed, pulled up his hood and made his way up to the coffee area where Hawke was skimming through a literary magazine, one hand wrapped around a paper cup, his ankle folded over his knee and listlessly bouncing in time with the song on the overhead  
.  
Fenris brought his sleeve to his mouth. He glared at him, the close trim of his scruff, the steady tap of his foot, wishing he would vanish.

“Hawke.”

Hawke nearly spit out his drink. “Fenris,” he retorted, equally deadpan but his eyes were dancing beneath their frames of dark lashes and suddenly Fenris didn't feel like saying no to him anymore.

Shaking his head in mild disbelief, Fenris yanked the magazine from Hawke’s hands and dropped it on Tally’s shelving cart on their way out the door, huffing a quiet _bye_ to the new register girl who practically screamed “see you tomorrow night, Fenris!” as he passed.

When they made it to the nearest intersection, Hawke turned to him with an honest smile, his black hair carding gently in the breeze.

“What is it?” Fenris asked, irritably adjusting the bag on his shoulder. His lack of a good night's sleep made it seem heavier than usual.

“I think she likes you,” Hawke responded casually, “you should ask her out.”

“Not interested.”

“Yeah? Then why're you all red?”

Fenris didn't think he was red and was about to say so when Hawke cut him off with a soft “you look really tired, Fenris.” His brown eyes swept in worry across his face, lingering a little too long on the space below his bottom lip. Fenris immediately dipped his head down to avoid them. 

“Hey. Everything good?”

“Fine,” he mumbled, rubbing his chin, “where did you park?”

“Oh God, like 6th.”

Fenris walked ahead of him as they crossed the street. “We'd be better off walking,” he chided over his shoulder, smiling despite himself.

He noticed the gauze clinging to the in of Hawke's exposed elbow the moment they entered the Jeep. Eyes locked to it, Fenris buckled his seatbelt and boldly asked, “did you give blood?”

“Some’th like that,” Hawke breathed. His arm moved to the back of the passenger headrest; Fenris had to lean in order to avoid contact as they pulled out of the parking space. “So I just realized that I forgot my binder at home.”

“I do not mind taking the bus.”

“ _I_ mind you taking the bus,” Hawke bit, strained and half-attentive, “it'll only take a minute.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Fenris sighed, heated, watching the buildings blur together past his window while Hawke’s scent lingered in his throat.

Hawke and Isabela lived on the ground floor of a two-unit bungalow somewhat close to Josie's Books. Their porch was fairly roomy, its overhang accented with strings of miniature hanging lanterns, its floor home to a few wooden chairs, a tattered loveseat and novelty ashtrays in the shapes of pirate ships. Fenris initially offered to sit outside but Hawke wouldn't have it, and before he knew it, he was following Hawke's footsteps through the red front door and into the living room where many of Isabela's Facebook pictures were taken.

Framed antique maps covered the walls, alongside weathered record sleeves, mounted instruments and a portrait of Mittens dressed in full Victorian getup. A pleasantly stained Turkish carpet took up the center of the hardwood floor, ending right below a red couch where Isabela snored beneath several sheets of flannel, and beside her was Mittens, whose tongue melted from his mouth like a slug. Fenris let him smell his glove.

“Thirsty?” Hawke rasped, hoarse, extending a glass of water to him with a quiet smile.

Nodding his thanks, Fenris accepted and watched Hawke disappear through one of the doors in the hallway, the musky, addictive scent of the house--laundry, dog, firewood?--braiding through every breath he took, closing steadily around his chest as he waited, awkward, in the middle of the living room.

When Hawke reappeared, he was dressed in jeans and balancing two binders and a phone charger in his left hand. “Hey,” he whispered, placing Fenris’s empty glass next to a wine bottle on a nearby coffee table. He opened the door, letting Fenris out first. “Wanna get Coldstone?”

\--

_“by some miracle i have gone 24.5 yrs of my life without contracting a single sexually transmitted disease. we're throwing a party at the hanged man tomorrow night to celebrate our clean bills of health so come say hi/ buy us beer”_

Fenris, along with 119 other anonymous Facebook users, clicked the “like” button on Isabela's status as he idly scrolled down the page. He didn't care about anything she ever posted, but he had a pattern of ignoring her messages and figured he could make up for it by showing support for her positive life choices.

His mistake. Again. It took less than a minute for a chat window to appear at the corner of Fenris's laptop screen, freezing the movie trailer he was trying to watch.

It said “FENRIS” and was quickly followed by a picture of a laughing skull.

_Blip!_  
_Blip!_  
_Blip!_  
_Blip!_

“party at the hanged man tomorrow night  
7 til whenever  
me and hawke play at 8  
come”

Blanking on a solid excuse, Fenris automatically typed “I am not 21.” to get her to go away.

“youre not?!  
omfg i'm so sorry  
it doesnt mattre though  
we can buy you beer”

_Why? _“Maybe.”__

__“no! do it!  
you should come to at least see us play a song about chlamydia”_ _

__Fenris actually laughed at that. “You aren't exactly selling it.”_ _

__“sell what?  
you should come”_ _

__“Maybe. I might have to work on Friday.”_ _

__Fenris paused. At Coldstone yesterday, Hawke said that Isabela worked herself up over being ignored. Granted the conversation wholly regarded her brief fling with Tally, Fenris didn't want to seem any ruder than he usually did._ _

__He added, “I appreciate the invite,” closed his laptop and dragged his pillow over his head. Thursday was an unusual day to throw a party, clean bill of health or not. There would be people. People liked to talk. They liked to ask questions, they liked to form opinions, they probably liked to get ice cream with Hawke before class on a Tuesday, too, and Fenris hated the idea of anyone else knowing that Hawke's favorite flavor was cake batter._ _

__Later that night, a building panic attack stopped dead at the sound of his vibrating phone, and Fenris tiredly unlocked it to a text from Hawke that read “ _You really should come_ ”._ _


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter heavily revised 5/23/2016, needs way more work gjrofgksd;lfkgnslrkgn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter in the world (sorry, was drunk). My mother's coming to visit so I might not have time to update until the end of the month. 
> 
> Uh. While I don't picture Hawke sounding like anything, I ripped off lyrics from an assortment of artists because I don't know how to be original.  
> 

Going solely by the comments left on Isabela's Clean Bill of Health status, Fenris expected the Hanged Man to look like a tiki hut made from the beer-soaked innards of withered, illegally imported saplings. He was surprised when he walked into a moderately upscale establishment and even more surprised to learn that bars regularly served cocktails in copper mugs.

“It's called a Moscow Mule,” explained Merrill. She seemed to notice everything, including the way his eyes strayed to the glistening cup on the table in front of her. “They always serve them in one of these. I stole one once, on accident. I use it to hold my toothbrushes now.”

Fenris sipped from his cup of water, seated at a round table between her and a man named Varric, who was short enough to make Fenris feel tall. The bar, barely lit by two kitschy antler-shaped chandeliers, swarmed with hushed chatter; many people were obviously there for the party, the remaining clientele of an older variety, dressed in shabby suits with their heads turned toward a stage where Isabela restlessly tuned her mandolin. Tally hovered nearby with the new girl from work; both of them looked like they were in a conversation about Pride and Prejudice, drinking from mason jars filled with dark fizzy liquid and fawning over three attractive bartenders too busy to give them the time of day. Fenris initially intended to stick close to them but Merrill had found him first. He didn't mind sitting with Merrill. He already sat with her every Monday.

It didn’t take long for Hawke to appear next to Isabela, wearing faded jeans, a pair of fleece slippers and a red flannel shirt that had its sleeves rolled a quarter way up his arms. He handed her a drink before he sat on an adjacent stool, muttering something inaudible that made her smack his shoulder many times.

“Did they have a song about Chlamydia?” Fenris asked quietly, mouth going dry as he watched Hawke's hands crack open a can of beer.

The man named Varric laughed heartily. “Wow, you missed it?”

Fenris shrugged. He'd walked in on time to catch Isabela's amplified request for a rum and coke, but he hadn’t actually heard them play. “I missed a lot, clearly.”

“Sure did,” Varric conceded before impatiently motioning at the cup of water on the table. “What's the matter? Don't drink much?”

“Oh, Fenris just isn't 21 yet,” Merrill cut in, waving her copper mug around with a timid smile. “At least I don't think he is. Are you 21 yet, Fenris?”

Fenris shook his head and listlessly peeled the paint on the edge of his chair.

“Ahhh, don't worry,” Varric slammed his glass onto the table, standing up with a lazy grab at the empty pitcher. “We got ya.”

As Fenris turned to protest, the bar settled down to a couple of open guitar chords resonating through the speakers. He let out an annoyed sigh and folded his arms onto the table, propping his head up with a gloved hand as he watched Hawke grin behind the shadow of an old microphone.

“I'm drunk,” laughed Isabela from her perch. It echoed through the room and elicited several cheers from the audience. “Don't think I can lead that one...”

“It'll be fine,” Hawke responded, gentle. His voice bled in and out as he moved to adjust the angle of his leg. Beginning a steady strum, he stared expectantly at Isabela, who kept cracking up behind her fingers, but Fenris's heart was already hammering wildly in his rib cage.

He recognized the song immediately but didn't realize how broad his smile was until his cheeks started to hurt. It was the song Hawke said they played a lot, the one Fenris chose in his Jeep nearly a month ago, and as he lowered his head to his elbows he caught himself humming along to the smooth, soothing roll of Hawke's voice.

_“And the mercy seat is waitin’, and I think my head is burnin’--”_

The table shook when Varric reclaimed his seat, accompanied by an older woman with eyes the color of cool water. As Fenris lifted his head, a glass full of ale slid neatly into his palm and he stared at it for a second before deciding to give it a taste.

In the comfort of his dorm Fenris typically preferred wine to beer, but the pitcher Varric brought to the table was brimming with an IPA that he secretly enjoyed for its high alcohol content. He muttered a begrudging _thank you_ and glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone of importance was near—given Hawke's academic reputation, he expected to find the dean of the Arts and Sciences department among the spectators—before emptying half his glass in a long-winded gulp.

“So nobody cares about how old you are,” Varric's voice arched over the chorus. The woman next to him smiled cordially from across the table, revealing eye crinkles that warmed Fenris's face in their striking similarity to Hawke's.

“He's right, you know,” Merrill added. Fenris sank low in his chair, wincing, thinking, _it’s not that, stop,_ before she continued, “Hawke brought me here on my 19th birthday and nobody asked me for my ID. I think I had a scary time. I don't remember very much of it, really...”

The blue-eyed woman shook her head in exaggerated disbelief. “It's nice to know that my son's the bad seed of the neighborhood,” she sighed, bringing her gin up to her tightened lips, her peppery hair falling from the loose braid at the side of her head.

Merrill smacked her hands to her mouth, blush furiously noticeable even in the dim light of the bar. “Oh no! Oh, Mrs. Hawke, I didn't mean it like that,” she plead, “I wanted to come, and it was more than two summers ago, I didn't—”

The woman laughed and placed a hand on her skinny forearm. “Merrill. How many times have I asked you to call me Leandra? Use my _maiden_ name, at least.”

“I know, Mrs. Ha—Leandra—Garrett really isn't a bad seed at all, I promise, Fenris and I have been taking his class this semester and—”

Fenris's eyes widened instantly. _GARRETT?!_

“Oh dear, I was just kidding,” soothed Hawke's mother, her voice laden in apology. “Everything’s fine, darling. He isn't as bad as his father was at his age.”

“Yeah, calm down, Daisy,” Varric laughed, automatically topping off Fenris's beer with what was left of the pitcher. “Jesus Christ, go get yourself another Mule. Get one for this kid too, he looks like he needs one.”

“I-I have beer,” Fenris lifted his overflowing glass to emphasize his point, leaving a trail of ale across his lap. His head was red-hot and reeling in a tide of nervous resentment. _Garrett?_ How had he gone so long without learning Hawke's first name? Was it in the syllabus? Did Merrill or Tally ever mention it before? Why didn't Hawke say anything about it?

“Good, you can have both. A healthy BAC is key to a happy life.”

The conversation halted when Merrill quickly left the table. Sighing, Fenris turned his attention back to the stage and tried to ignore the beer seeping through the denim of his black jeans, watching Isabela struggle to find a balance between her glass and the miniature keyboard that had taken the place of her mandolin. 

Beside her, Hawke indignantly shook his head. Fenris could have sworn he mouthed _no, come on,_ but she ignored him, face still as a sheet of ice as she mapped through a haunting introduction that hushed the whole room.

Hawke's mother made a soft sound and Fenris tried not to stare as Varric instantly slid his arm around her shoulders. There was a noise that sounded like the crack of a windshield, causing Fenris to jump in his seat, transfixed on the shades of autumn in Hawke's eyes while his voice crept in hesitant hymns from the speaker. He didn’t look okay.

Merrill soon returned with two copper mugs clutched tightly in her hands; she smiled at him as she sat down, but her shoulders were tense and her eyes looked sad as they dropped to the condensation pooling on the lime at the rim of her cup.

“I wish they wouldn't play this one,” she squeaked, quiet. “I'm very sorry, Leandra.”

Hawke's mother waved her hand in tender dismissal as Varric grumbled, “probably Isabela's idea.”

Fenris couldn't hear most of the lyrics, but the few lines he distinguished were about driving, bright faces and _“she asked, can we slow down?”_ He tightened his arms around his stomach, leaning forward against the table, the flutter of Hawke's fingers immobilizing him as they worked their way up the neck of his guitar in a melancholic march. When Hawke quirked his mouth it was not in laughter, and his shining gaze fell on their table, locking an apology to his mother for a brief instant before straying back down to his strumming hands. Fenris wanted to touch his face.

“Aw, ma,” Hawke muttered away from the microphone as the song finished. He rubbed his eyes for a long while, nodding a little when Isabela grabbed a ukulele from the vacant stool behind them. “This one's about chicken and granola,” she announced. Hawke looked up with a light chuckle but Fenris instantly knew that his smirk was forced. “Here's to not having any STDs!”

Several people cried out in approval, Merill included, her relieved scream beating annoyingly against the structural integrity of Fenris's eardrums. _Oh my God. Stop._ “Fenris, try your drink,” she urged, pushing the extra Moscow Mule into his arms with a duly intoxicated grin. “Squeeze the lime in it first, but then try it.”

Fenris quickly emptied the last of his beer, wiped his mouth in surrender while he dropped the lime wedge into the cocktail, then took a sip. The sip became longer, and before he knew it he was sucking at a mug full of ice.

“Holy shit, do you want to die?” cackled Varric as the verse _“yum yum granola bone”_ echoed in bouts of laughter through the bar.

Fenris asked, “Pardon?”, the table beneath him whirling in his sudden sway.

“There's a shit ton of vodka in that!” Once again, Varric grabbed the empty pitcher as he stood up, “want another one?”

Fenris nodded exaggeratedly, removing a ten dollar bill from his wallet, face tingling in the onset of a particularly heavy-handed buzz. Hawke's mom, who was still drinking the same glass of gin she’d started with, moved into Varric's vacant seat and rested her chin on her palm.

“You must be Fenris,” she said. “I’m Hawke’s mom. Have you seen them play before?” 

“No, I h-have not.” He took another drink from his copper mug and frowned when he remembered that it was empty.

She gave him a very supportive smile; chest churning, Fenris noticed that Hawke had her mouth. “He's really good with his guitar. I'm glad I decided to read his Christmas list that year, even if he did sell it in high school.”

Merrill dipped her pink face into the conversation. “Oh no! He sold the guitar you bought him?”

“Yes,” laughed Hawke’s mom, shaking her head and beaming across the bar at her son's focused profile. “He used the money to buy himself a better one, and then he sold that too.”

“What an _asshole_ ,” Varric injected, claiming a different seat and sliding another Moscow Mule across the table to Fenris. “How's Junior doing?”

“He's fine, but I wish they'd let him come home more. I might have him for Thanksgiving but I won’t count on it.”

Fenris stirred his drink with his straw. Hawke had mentioned that he had a younger brother in the military, but he only brought it up as an example during a lesson on hive mentality. Fenris didn't know anything about his family, if they lived nearby, why his mother used her maiden name. _Garrett._

“Are you wearing gloves?” Hawke's mother asked him, concerned. “Well, I guess it does get chilly at night, now. Are you from a warmer climate?”

Fenris forced himself to smile politely as he gave her an indecisive nod. It was somewhat true. He grew up closer to the south, but save for a distinct shift in elevation the climate was pretty much the same. _It snowed less there,_ he thought, _but it was just as cold._

“Garrett mentioned that you'd be this shy,” she touched his arm in a motherly motion of comfort, the unexpected contact causing him to ball his fists. 

“I'm really sorry,” he explained, sincere.

Hawke's mother giggled warmly. “Why is everybody apologizing to me tonight?” she asked. “You've done nothing wrong, dear, but if you drink that fast you'll be sick very soon.”

As Fenris wrapped his fingertips around the handle of his mug, a wave of applause washed over the bar. Hawke stood up from his stool and peeled off his guitar strap, laughing, “so I'm too drunk for this,” as he turned to Isabela, who threw her hands up and mouthed _“told you.”_ He quickly waved at a table close to the stage before adding, “The next band isn't scheduled to play for another hour but—”

Isabela cut him off: “BUT WE'RE INTRODUCING THEM RIGHT NOW SO WE CAN GET MORE BOOZE!”

Someone from the audience yelled “thanks!” in response.

The volume in the bar picked up significantly as Hawke and Isabela packed up their equipment at the back of the stage, and Fenris peered down at his cocktail in regret of his decision to go out. He was certainly, definitely drunk, and the surrounding loudness clawed deep into his head, making him pull his hood back up. He brought a shaking hand to his face just as Varric reached across the table to pour himself another glass.

“Isabela's really liking that ukulele, Leandra,” he said, “hopefully Hawke doesn't sell it when he graduates.”

“Oh, she does? I'm happy to hear that. I feel bad for missing all their little shows this year.”

Varric laughed. It sounded too loud. “Well, at least you came out to celebrate his healthy sexual acts.”

“Wow,” Hawke swiftly appeared in the space between his mother and Fenris, holding a fresh can of beer in his sweaty hand. “How about we _don't_ discuss my healthy sexual acts with my mother.”

Leandra brought his face down to plant an exaggerated kiss on his cheek, cooing “I’m very proud of you, honey.”

Fingertips pressed to the bridge of his nose, Hawke groaned, “oh God,” and smiled beneath his palm. “For using condoms?”

“Among other things.”

“For declining drug-related blowjo—”

“ _GARRETT!_ ”

Fenris shivered at the gentle scratch of nails between his shoulder blades. He looked up to see Hawke beaming down at him, mouthing “hey,” as he pulled his hand away.

“Hi,” Fenris responded. His back tingled in the spot where Hawke's fingers had been, so he distracted himself by taking another sip from his Moscow Mule.

Hawke gasped. “Fenris? _Drinking vodka_?”

“You should've seen the way he fucking annihilated the last one,” chimed Varric, sliding down his seat far enough to accidentally kick Fenris in his ankle. “Shit, sorry. His broodiness dropped like four levels.”

Fenris felt himself flush as he laid his head down onto his arms, but the sound of Hawke's laughter eliminated any remnants of anxiety that hadn't already disappeared with the alcohol. The walls weren't quite spinning yet, but he couldn’t keep himself upright, hands and feet definitely too hot. With an unintentional, breathless sway, he eavesdropped on Hawke's mother's call to a taxi company.

“Stay out of trouble, children,” she sighed. Isabela's voice responded in oscillating volumes and Fenris knitted his brow in confusion. He must have missed her walk up.

When he managed to lift his head again, Hawke and his mother were gone, and in their place were Tally and the new girl from work, whose name he couldn't remember for the life of him. She had her face up to his, her mouth curved down in a pout, her nose less freckled than Tally's and entirely too close to his arm.

“Are you okay, Fenris?” she drawled. Fenris supposed she was cute. Hawke said she was cute the other day. It had made him angry.

“Fine,” he drew his straw up to his lips. He was feeling a lot more drunk than he did a minute ago, and the table was crawling with unfamiliar faces that bore their hostile gazes deep into his skin. The blonde guy from Isabela's pictures was there. _When did_ he _get here?_

“Hawke and the others went to see Leandra off,” Merrill told him, words distorted and bleeding through him from every agitated angle. He swallowed, thick, as she dropped her voice down to a forceful whisper to add, “I think they're smoking _weed_ and _cigarettes_ , but no worries, they’ll probably be back soon.”

Hours must have passed; Fenris’s heart drummed in his ears as he slowly allowed himself to a calm state, vision flashing colors across his black sleeve. 

Soon enough, Hawke squeezed himself into the ever-declining space between Fenris and his obvious admirer, the thick scent of smoked weed filling the air around them. Isabela reached over and shook Fenris's copper mug before declaring, “okay, so that's one pitcher of Sandal's, two Cuba Libres, a can of whatever the fuck you're drinking—” she poked Hawke's shoulder, “—a whiskey sour, a French 75 areyoufuckingserious? And a Mule. Merrill, did you—kay, so two Mules. Okay. Fuck. So.”

“I'll come with you,” Varric sighed. “The bartender's gonna kill us.”

Fenris found himself cackling and swaying, sipping ruthlessly at the remainder of his drink until he heard the hollow slurp of melted ice at the bottom of his straw. He laid his head down again on his arm for a moment, but lifted it up immediately when he felt a light tug on his sleeve.

“Awww, I've never seen you this drunky,” Tally cooed over the multiple conversations happening at the table, leaning in to see him from two seats away.

“M'really not drunk.”

“Ohhh, you're such a _liar_.”

Tally's statement must have piqued Merrill's interest because she clapped her hands to the sides of her blushing face and asked, “Fenris has gotten drunk before?”

“Um, yeah?” Tally's mouth curled at the corner, and Fenris heard the surprised cough that Hawke tried to disguise with his beer can. “He ain't _that_ much of a fucking sociopath.”

“I'm right here.”

Hawke looked down at him then, his dark eyebrows tilted, his mouth reddening between his teeth. They exchanged glares before Hawke leaned over his shoulder to tap the rim of his empty mug. “So why couldn’t I buy you a drink?”

 _Because I can’t—_ Fenris shrugged and muttered something that he hoped was “I didn't want anyone to see,” but as Hawke's eyes flickered between his lips and his chin, Fenris knew that his excuse wasn't bought.

“Sociopath is not even—” Hawke said slowly, breaking eye contact to lightly chastise Tally across the table. “There are like, four people at this table right now who show more signs of being a sociopath than him.”

Tally giggled. “Like Isabela?”

“Wow,” Isabela snapped, slamming Tally's drink down onto the table with enough force to send half of it pouring over its edge. She huffed over to Fenris and slammed his drink down too, clearly ignoring Hawke's hand as it reached out to grab the beer she brought for him.

Fenris began to laugh. He felt the curve of Hawke's bicep at his shoulder, and for reasons that had everything to do with alcohol, the bells in his stomach forgot to ring.

–

If Hawke thought he was pretty drunk by the time waved off his mother's taxi, Fenris must've been gloriously fucking _wasted_.

No, _wasted_ was an overstatement. Despite all his swaying, Fenris still managed to form legible words. That in itself was telling of two things: either Fenris got drunk so often that he’d learned how to handle himself during the onset of early alcohol poisoning, or he wasn't as drunk as Hawke believed him to be.

After hearing Tally's comment about Fenris's Secret Life as a Frequent Drinker (what the fuck?) Hawke assumed the truth was probably in the middle. Yes, he was swaying. No, he didn't look sick. Yes, he was on his third Moscow Mule of the night – to Hawke's knowledge, anyway. No, he didn't fall off his chair like Varric did, even if his head kept dropping to the table.

...Yes, he wasn't shying away from the fucking obvious-ass advances from his new coworker, and Hawke was pretty confident that in most circumstances her proximity to him would've resulted in tears and bloodshed from all involved.

That's why, in his own bleary-drunk glory, Hawke had taken it upon himself to insert his entire body into the nine inches of space between Fenris's sunken shoulder and the girl's doe eyed face. Seriously, she probably had no idea that Fenris's favorite constellation was (inexplicably) Aquila and therefore had no business breathing his air.

Isabela quickly got over the sociopath comment and handed Hawke his thousandth beer, which he downed like a champ in a matter of seconds. The can basically crushed itself.

“Okay, so!” Isabela announced, laying repeated punches to Anders’ back to get him to shut up about his cat, who’d decided to come home after three weeks of living in the reeds by Lake La Salle. “I’m out of free drink tickets, let’s leave. Let’s _leave_ , you guys.”

Hawke rolled his eyes. He was still upset with her for making him play The Depressing Song That We Don't Sing When Mom's Around, and every little thing that came out of her stupid mouth made him want to sick Mittens onto her tires. Upsetting him was a very hard thing for someone to accomplish. Annoying him, more so, and she somehow managed to do both within a single hour. Shaking her voice out of his ears, he brought his elbows down to the table, squeezing himself even tighter between Fenris and the poor, clueless, lovestruck girl to his right.

“Hawke,” Fenris muttered to him. It was so deadpan. His lips were wet. He kept putting his head down, still, and the way he gazed up through his messy hair made Hawke's lungs curl wildly into themselves.

“Doing good?” he breathed, to which Fenris smirked. Hawke responded in kind. “You'll tell me if you're not, okay?”

A slight pause as Fenris tried to crawl face-first into his cup. “Alright.”

Hawke exhaled a chuckle, leaning closer. “Submit your abstract by Saturday.”

“A-already did.”

“Yeah? When?”

“Way here. Bus,” Fenris slurred.

“You write on the bus?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Stop that,” Hawke laughed. “I hope you don't write on your bike.”

“No. Oh, God—” Fenris's head slipped back down to his arms. “I have to get new tires. I forgot to get new tires—”

Hawke braced himself against the sudden shift in Fenris's weight, small bones bending soft beneath his black hoodie, pushing into him until he had no choice but to slide his arm down around his back.

“—I may be drunk, Hawke.”

“You may be.”

“Congratulationsss.”

“Hm?” Hawke mewled. Fenris's shoulder grew heavier and heavier against his chest and his hood smelled just like lavender laundry detergent.

“For not a-accepting drug-related blowjobs.”

Just as Hawke was about to say something regrettable in his drunken haze, Isabela's face poked over his shoulder. “What about blowjobs?” She cackled, then added, “so we're all—OH MY GOD, SHUT _UP_ —we're all going back to the place.”

In the time it took her to announce the change of events, Fenris must have realized that he was leaning half his weight into Hawke's arm because he instantly tore himself away to finish his drink. 

Hawke glanced across the table where Varric, Anders, and Aveline were slowly leaving their seats and asked, “are we all walking?” as his arm went cold.

“Mhm,” said Isabela, provocatively sliding her fingertips across the width of Fenris's shoulders. Hawke felt a distant wave of satisfaction when Fenris recoiled at her touch. “You're so precious,” she crooned to him, “come over.” Even in the high volume of the bar the haphazard _clank_ of her instruments could be heard beneath the canvas of her giant tote bag.

To Hawke's absolute surprise, Fenris instantly agreed.

Most of the crowd – Isabela, Varric, all them – went ahead first, leaving Hawke with the burden of getting his guitar, an old amp and a duffel bag full of cables home. He ended up piling them on Merrill's scooter because she insisted that she was sober enough to drive (she wasn't) and blocking her seat with things she couldn’t lift was the only way to get her to walk like a responsible person.

Rolling her scooter down the down the road, Hawke adjusted his grip on the handles and listened to the stumbling patter of footsteps behind him. Occasionally he heard Merrill say “oh, sorry, Fenris.” Occasionally he heard the response of a stark, honest laugh. At one point, during a particularly nasty gust of wind, he turned around to ask if they were cold, but Merrill had a jacket on and Fenris just smiled at him, quiet, his eyes squinting hard and bleary under the light of the street.

There were four people smoking cigarettes on the porch when they approached, among which was Tally, who immediately threw Fenris the biggest _oh, really?_ look Hawke had ever seen. He used his foot to hold the door open for Fenris and Merrill and four stoners that claimed to know Isabela, but the unbelievably shitty state of his living room made him wish that they would've just stayed at the bar.

Three pairs of varied-skintoned arms and a chorus of _“Haaaaawke!”_ greeted him as he walked in, but all he could see was the overturned bowl of taco dip taking residence in the middle of the rug. _Twenty minutes,_ Hawke thought incredulously, kneeling to wipe the Venetian mask of refried beans from the upper half of his dog’s face, _they've been here for twenty minutes_. As if reading his mind, Isabela handed him a red cup filled with something that smelled strong enough to distract him from the tracks of shredded Mexican four-blend cheese leading up to the bathroom, where Varric could be heard expelling the contents of his stomach in time with the rhythm of a Nick Cave song.

Hawke took the cup in relief and made his way through the house, Mittens close on his trail. There were maybe thirty people total, give or take the random face that emerged from the den or Isabela's bedroom, and he quickly lost Merrill to a conversation with Anders about the shadiness of the pharmaceutical industry, himself to a conversation about STDs with a group of giggling girls that he'd gotten drunk with a few times in the past. 

“Wait. No, wait, no,” one of the girls, a pretty blonde named Anora, placed her delicate hand on his bicep to steady her footing while she tried to wrap her drunken brain around the story. “Ohmygod. Okay, no, so did they have to _put it in_?”

“Put it in what?”

“You know...”

“Oh, my _dick_? Ha! Hahahaha, nothing went in my dick.”

“Wait. Shhh, wait wait wait. So like, they didn't put anything in your—”

“ _Dick_ ,” Hawke cut in, smirking ruefully at the blush creeping to her pale cheeks.

“—yeah but like. How did they—wait—how did they test you?”

Another girl cut in with, “Bel said they wiped her fucking clean, though.”

“Wow, nope, just cups of piss for me.”

“Lucky _fuck_ ,” Isabela called from the couch. Hawke raised his cup in salute and she returned the favor by accidentally pouring rum all over the guy lying on her lap. “Shit, _sooorry_ kit'n, can get that, promise...”

Laughing, Hawke turned his attention back to the giggling group of girls, but his smile faded the moment he noticed, in the edge of his periphery, that Fenris’s arm had fallen hostage to the clawing grip of his new coworker.

“Yeah...” Hawke absently agreed—to what, he didn’t know. He drew his cup to his mouth and focused hard on Anora’s gaze as she began to talk conversational shit about her ex, but his eyes kept flickering to Fenris sitting in the corner of the room, his sudden swerves, back pressed up against the wall with his own red cup clutched tight in his fists. His coworker giggled absurdly; when she laid her head on his shoulder, Hawke swallowed, anxious, and absorbed himself in every single word that left Anora’s mouth.

”Why’d he do that, though?”

But Fenris was crossed-legged on the floor. It took a single spike, one ripple of green discomfort to bring Hawke’s hands up in polite dismissal. “Hold on,” he said, backing away from their circle. Walking toward the kitchen, he called “psst, Fenris,” with a glance over his shoulder.

Fenris fucking leapt.

“Thank you.” It came out in a sigh that followed Hawke into the kitchen.

“Yeah, no problem. Told you she likes you.”

“Still not interested.”

Hawke smiled at him, nice and as comforting as he could, while he poured a shot of whiskey for them both. “That’ll change.”

“Doubtful.”

They clinked glasses. “Yeah? Let's see.”

Just as Hawke tipped back his head, the group of girls he'd been flirting with entered the kitchen and opened his fridge. They fished out the bottle of Coke and topped themselves off, but one of them, Anora's abrasive friend, the black-haired one who lied about her name so often that Hawke wasn’t sure if he knew it anymore, sauntered right up to Fenris and bluntly asked,

“Where'd those scars come from?”

Heat immediately rushed into Hawke's face. “What the f—”

“I fell through a glass window,” Fenris responded, meeting Hawke's eyes with a casual smirk.

Shoulders dropping slow, Hawke waited for the girls to disappear before he snorted, “yeah?” and poured them both another shot. He gasped when Fenris waved in decline.

“Really? But Tally said you're a closet drunk.”

“No, no no no. You misheard. You must have. No, she—ahaha—she said I—”

He was fidgeting again, wringing his hands together, words fading as he visibly tried to regain composure.

“Aw, you're drunk, Fenris.”

“I am.”

“Me too,” Hawke laughed, making Fenris laugh too. “Fall through glass windows often?”

“Shhh. No.” Fenris covered his face. “Gimme a drink,” he demanded, fidgeting more, reaching for the bottle of Jack that Hawke immediately brought over his head like a carrot.

“Nooo, you'll die,” he shook his head and used his forearm to block Fenris’s insistent grapples. “You'll die, I don't want you to die--”

“Won't die.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Hawke poured them another round of shots. “Potatoes or cheese?”

“Potatoes.”

_Clink._

“Mashed or fries?

“Fries,” Fenris choked into his sleeve.

“O--” _cough, cough_ “--okay--” _cough._ “You’re gonna answer that one again after you try my mom’s meatloaf.” Coughing again, Hawke leaned into his sink as he added, “tile or wood?”

“No preference. Please try not to get sick in front of me.”

Hawke grinned and spit into the drain. “M’not,” he said, turning back around. “You don't feel weird? I mean—shit—I mean to be here? It's not weird?”

“You ask so many questions.”

They stood in the kitchen for what felt like (and probably was) an hour and all Hawke could do was smile as he balanced his weight against the counter. Drunk Fenris was like exhausted Fenris, all flushed cheeks and giggles muted by the fabric on his palms. No distance. No shyness. No scratching at the scuffs beneath his lip, and Hawke loved everything about it, his loss of footing, his cracked grin, the childish excitement with which he tipped back another drink and the unrivaled ease with which he answered his “so many questions.”

The game started last week over a cigarette that Fenris timidly asked to share, right at the end of a Wednesday night. Hawke had blandly asked, “hey, d’you like coffee?”, then “cream or black?”, then “sunset or sunrise” the moment he’d realized that Fenris was a fan or this-or-thats, no matter how long his pauses had been.

Alcohol lessened those pauses, and Hawke drank it up with fervor, barely realizing how many people approached him with arms outstretched until they stumbled back to the living room to find that most of the crowd had left.

Fenris immediately collapsed onto the couch, sinking so deep in its corner that he looked half his usual size. Hawke smiled at him, knees weak at the sleepy weight of his eyelids, and quietly removed the cup from his gloved hands before sitting down in the center of the rug, between Anders and the taco dip and _wait, is that fuckig dog puke?_.

“Listen though. No but _listen_ , though,” Isabela drawled from her spot next to Fenris. “Varric, _listen_ , okay? But like, I didn't even _know_.”

Anders snorted. “You had to know.”

“No, no no no, I didn't--”

“She pro'lly didn't,” Hawke conceded through a laugh.

“Shut the fuck up! No, wait, _don’t_ shut up. You’re right. I love you. I didn't _know._ ”

“Know what?” asked Fenris's new coworker.

Aveline cut in with “oh, she was getting too personal with someone's boyfriend,” which made Isabela yell, “you're _such a fucking bitch_! Ohmygod—” and Hawke suddenly remembered the problem with liquor, how it crashed all at once with no decency or warning like beer. Every voice in the room merged together, sending him down on his back, walls spinning, with an arm strewn over his eyes to block the light. He smelled the nauseating acidity of salsa -- everyone sounded just like layers of sour cream and shredded lettuce --

“Is he okay?”

That was either Aveline or Merrill. Probably Merrill. Cheese. He wanted to say “I feel great,” but the voice repeated, “Fenris, are you okay?” and Hawke sat up so fast that bile burned up his throat.

Fenris jumped up the moment Isabela laid her hand on his back, tripping into the middle of the living room with his hands knotted into his hood. Five people moved forward but Hawke, already on his feet, caught him by his shoulders and immediately guided him out to the patio couch before anyone could ask about the hysterical apologies rolling from his mouth.

Voice careful, Hawke rasped a soothing “hey,” and knelt at Fenris’s feet. He kept rocking back and forth, scratching at his sleeves until the snaps of threads were the only thing Hawke could hear. “Psst, buddy—”

But then the door flew open, and Merrill tiptoed out with a full glass of water and Isabela’s American Spirits. “Here,” she whispered, placing them onto the wooden deck floor. She nervously scurried back to the house without so much as second, sadder glance.

Fenris took the glass, when offered, with a shaking hand and coughed, “ _fuck_ ” as his breaths grew increasingly more erratic. Hawke realized with a strange sinking sensation that it was the first time he'd ever heard Fenris swear.

“Can’t—stop—please stop it, I did not think— ”

Hawke rested his hands on Fenris's bouncing knees to still them.

“Please s-stop it—”

 _Stop what?_ With a slow, cautious sigh, Hawke pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took a couple of deep drags and handed it to Fenris.

“Drink,” Hawke murmured, offering a comforting smile as the cherry turned bright orange at the end of Fenris's fingertips. His awful, twitching gasps materialized through the smoke, but the haunted look in his eye started to give way to exhaustion and Hawke, moving to sit next to him on the patio couch, knew that the worst part was over. _Who's the glass window?_

He accepted the cigarette when Fenris handed it back to him. “Apples or bananas?” he asked, taking a pull, blowing smoke over his shoulder. A chilly breeze riled the leaves across the lawn.

Fenris buried his face in his gloves. Hawke had to lean in to hear him. _Apples_.

“Blue or green?”

“Blue.”

Hawke could hear the relief work itself into Fenris's tired voice. “Stars or moon?”

“I don’t know. Moon. I don’t know.”

“Moon,” Hawke repeated, laughing. “You howl at it, too?” Fenris dragged his gaze up to his, turbulent and sad, dark as the distant sea. Hawke's breath hitched in his throat as he found himself softly asking, “whose eyes do you have, Fenris?”

But Fenris just stared at him like he was far away, tears rebuilding against the greens and reds. “I'm sorry,” he rasped, shaking his head.

Hawke let him have the apology. He stubbed his cigarette out in one of Isabela's souvenir ashtrays (a pirate flag that had “Key West, FL” inscribed in Comic Sans along the side, he didn’t know where it came from) and folded his arms across his chest, stretching his legs in front of him until the heels of his slippers scraped against the floorboard.

“Is talking helping? Should I stop?”

Fenris made a small, shivery noise. “I did not know your name is Garrett.”

The arbitrariness of the comment took Hawke by complete, delightful surprise, and he threw his hand over his eyes as he laughed. “Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“Christ, Fenris, it's in the syllabus.”

“Oh.”

They sat in relieved silence for a long while, listening to the feeble chirps of dying summer cicadas and the occasional hum of a passing car. It was 3:42 AM when Hawke next checked his phone; he eventually had to whisper, “hey, c'mon,” because the alcohol coat was wearing thin, leaving the chilly October wind to find a way into his skin.

They crept into the living room where Merrill and Varric were passed out on opposite ends of the couch and Anders was on the floor, nestled soundly into Isabela’s dirty Spiderman pillow. Hawke led them through the hallway, past the bathroom and through the door of his bedroom, where he turned on his half-working Christmas lights and yawned, “I can call you a cab if you want.”

Fenris responded with a shrug, closing the bedroom door behind him. He looked exhausted.

“Also I can drive you,” Hawke added, staring vacantly at his red blanket. “You gotta let me sober up, though. Lay down.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mm, 'bout what?”

Still stumbling, Hawke walked over to his closet and found an old t-shirt to change into, but as his fingers worked at the buttons on his flannel and his eyes fell back upon the small figure curled up beneath his blanket, he felt an unsettling tug in the very bottom of his stomach. Maybe it was the leftover alcohol or the blinking stringed lights on the walls. Maybe it was the cold cotton of a new shirt against his skin, but he really, really loved the sight of Fenris in his bed.

A moth flew against the window. The record in the living room was nearing its end. He could hear the faint breaths coming from the other side of his bedroom where Fenris was passed out, rolling and perfect like the multicolored leaves outside.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mom drinks chocolate martinis? Quick filler chapter (awaiting an edit), thank you all so much for reading/responding/all that you do. I'll try to make this fic not-boring next week.

“ _Hawke,_

_Office tomorrow. 9 AM sharp. If you have prior engagements, cancel them._

_Dr. G. DuPuis, PhD_  
UB Chair of Psychology  
Associate Dean of Arts  & Sciences”

The email literally arrived in Hawke's inbox at 9:02 on Thursday night, just as he'd ordered two rum-and-Cokes to replace the drinks he stole from Isabela when she disappeared into the bathroom. He probably felt the buzz in his pocket when it came. He probably even reached down to check it, but forgot because that was the precise moment in which Fenris had walked through the doors of the Hanged Man and sat down with Merrill at a high-top table by the windows.

Thankfully the ominous feeling of “I bet I ignored something important” prompted him to check his messages at 4:11 AM so he could set an alarm.

An alarm that was currently gnawing through the peaceful stillness of his entire neighborhood.

“Nnnffffuuuuuck,” Hawke groaned, hammering his phone against the floor until it stopped. In a panicked frown he clicked on the display to check if he accidentally broke it but that just made it ring again ( _Cockadoodledoo! Cockadoodledoo!_ ), so he buried it beneath is pillow and let his insides holler their woes.

He laid on his aching back for a long moment as he tried to orient himself to the morning light beaming through his window, and when he finally gathered the strength to sit up, a searing migraine rushed against his brain and practically rendered him blind. _Oh fuuuhuuuuuhuuuuck meeeee_ , he thought, dropping his hands against his eyes and falling back onto the floor.

Six minutes of pitiful self-loathing later, the blood curdling reemergence of his snooze alarm managed to convince him that waking up was The Right Thing To Do. He hoisted his weight up onto one of his elbows (his arm was covered in red, irritated crease marks from sleeping on the floor) and rubbed roughly at his eyes. His bladder was yelling at him but his headache was yelling way louder, and for a second he almost forgot that Fenris was sleeping about ten feet away from him.

Almost. Hawke couldn't totally forget because he was tangled in a mess of sheets on the floor for a reason. The reason had its gloved hand dangling off the side of his full-sized bed.

Hawke slowly got up and cracked his stiff back, then walked to his bathroom to pee and submerge his entire body in a bath of ice until he felt like he was on the brink of cryogenic stasis. He leered at Isabela's assortment of Lush products for way longer than his body thought was appropriate, hovering his now-blue fingertips over four different face washes before he settled on the one that was as black as his hungover soul.

 _Good, it's almost out,_ he thought. Isabela fucking hated it when he used her shit, but because it was the only bad room mate thing he ever did, Hawke made a point to use as much of her shit as he possibly could. The toothpaste was next. She used the kid's kind that tasted like bubblegum and had a picture of Spiderman on the front.

He brushed his teeth while he dried off, but he was shivering so hard that he accidentally jammed the toothbrush into his mouth at a horrible angle and immediately scratched the inside of his cheek. The taste of blood lingered on his tongue as he wrapped a towel around his waist and lugged his feet back into his bedroom, where Mittens was already sniffing Fenris's hand with curious fervor.

“Psst, Mit'ns,” whispered Hawke through a click of his tongue. When he tiptoed over to the bed, his dog immediately waddled away to investigate the sheets on the floor.

 _Aw._ Fenris was out cold, curled into a ball beneath the red comforter with his mouth slightly parted and his white hair fanned out across his forehead. He looked exhausted. Fuck, he even slept like he was exhausted, clenching his fists every few breaths and kicking his feet the same way a new puppy would on its first night home from the shelter.

Gazing down at him, Hawke debated whether he should wake him up at all. He didn't know what DuPuis wanted but it was probably nothing ( _PROBABLY NOTHING!_ ) and he'd most likely be home before Fenris finished the dream he was clearly having.

...He also knew Fenris well enough to know that he'd freak out if he woke up alone in an unfamiliar place. Isabela was home. She'd be horrible touchy-feely company for anyone going through the slightest bit of social discomfort, and she'd probably make him go to Planned Parenthood for an STD scan with the intent of blowing him on the ride home.

With a sigh, Hawke ran his hand through his wet hair and slowly whispered “ _hey you_ ” as he leaned over Fenris's tiny frame. His whole body was covered in goosebumps and water droplets puddled up around his feet, sinking his toes against his hardwood floor. He shivered for a second before trying again, softly crooning “F-Fenris” into the small heap of blankets to no avail.

God _damn_ his head hurt like Hell. He rubbed his temples as he heard Mittens nose open the door and leave the room, huffing as he marched into the hallway.

“Fenris.” Louder.

Still nothing. He placed three shivering fingers on the top of Fenris's fluffy head.

“ _Pssst!_ ”

“WH—?!” _Crash._

The force with which Fenris painted himself to the wall caused the whole house to groan, and for a second Hawke didn't know if he wanted to laugh or apologize.

Catching the nervous twitch in Fenris's bottom lip, Hawke decided to do neither. He cleared his throat and offered a small smile.

“Wow. Mornin',” he stated, idly sliding his foot through the water on the floor.

Fenris drew his knees up to his chin with a frown. “Y-you're wearing a towel.”

“Yep, and I'm _reeeally_ cold,” Hawke sauntered over to his closet in search of clothes. “I've gotta run to campus in a minute. Want a ride?”

Fenris just stared at him through tired shades of green, so Hawke stared back from across the room with a pair of blue gym shorts dangling limply from his fingers.

“I mean, you can just stay here and sleep if you want.”

“No. No, I would like a ride,” said Fenris, his eyes all wide and lucid, his eyebrows raised slightly like he didn't have any fucking headache at all. “Thank you.”

Hawke gruffed a response as he dug through his hamper in search of a sweater, noting distantly the rustle of wind-struck trees outside. When leaves started hitting his window, he momentarily wondered if jeans might be a better choice but did absolutely nothing to find a pair.

“Ah! Ah-ha!” he held up a grey thermal and comically stretched its sleeves apart before slinging it over his shoulder. Turning back to see Fenris stiff and terrified, his smile faltered.

“Everything good?” he asked.

Fenris nodded against the fraying threads of his black glove-covered hands.

–

“Jesus, it's fucking Friday,” groaned Hawke as he gloomily leered over his steering wheel. “Who the _fuck_ even goes to campus on a Friday?”

Fenris let out a small chuckle as he ignored the iPod that Hawke suggestively placed atop his knee. “Chemistry majors,” he rasped, tightening his hands around the cup of coffee Hawke insisted on buying him, “and you.”

“Pffft. You do, too.”

“I live on campus.”

“Yeah,” Hawke turned his signal on and reached for his own red-eye in the cup holder between them, his elbow grazing lightly against Fenris's sleeve. “Why _do_ you?” 

“Why do I what?”

“Live on campus. Like, I understand _Anders_ living there but you're 20 and not in med school.”

Fenris slowly bit down on the plastic lid of his cup, sinking down the leather passenger seat until his knees pressed against the glove compartment. Hawke asked so many questions. “It's... easier,” he said.

“Yeah?” Hawke laughed, “how?”

Fenris paused. “I don't know. I don't have to pay for it up front.”

“But you're gonna have to,” Hawke winced. When Fenris could see the gold of his eyes, he quickly sat up and fixed his attention to the window to his right.

“I have scholarships,” he grumbled, bringing his coffee up to his mouth. It burned against his upper lip but the October foliage was nearing its peak and he found himself barely noticing the heat. “...Grants. I am not worried about it.”

“If you say so. Who's your room mate?”

“Nobody.”

Hawke raised his eyebrows in a surprised nod. “Huh, really? Do you have your own bathroom?”

“No,” Fenris stifled a laugh. The burn on his mouth stretched uncomfortably with the movement so he rubbed at it with the back of his palm. “I really wish I did—ha—I shower at two in the morning.”

“That's not surprising at all...”

“I don't know what that means, Hawke.”

A brief silence fell over the car as Hawke made a left onto University Blvd, where Fenris's dorm complex decorated the block facing the Arts and Sciences parking lot. They were bland, browning buildings that stood fairly tall in comparison to most of campus, lined with orange trees and separated by walkways that split asymmetrically through patches of dehydrated grass.

It wasn't much and the tattery Toyotas parked in front of each building stood testament to that, but Fenris never really minded it. He didn't even hate the group of rowdy seniors who lived in the dorm directly below his because the vacant hum of their subwoofer helped him sleep on Saturday nights. Sure, he didn't have his own kitchen and he had to share a community bathroom with twelve strangers, but he seemed to go by relatively unnoticed and that was all he could really ask for.

Judging by the moderately appalled look on Hawke's face, though, Fenris got the distinct impression that he was biased in his comfort.

“How can you stand it?” scowled Hawke, reversing the Jeep into a space in front of the building Fenris pointed out.

“It isn't bad.”

“A clan of army brats just jogged by, Fenris. Oh, look, and there's a girl wearing a bikini in October.”

Fenris smiled and unbuckled his seat belt, his cup of coffee splashing lightly in his hand. “That's Meredith.”

“So you have friends!”

“I have an RA.”

Hawke snorted. With a tap to Fenris's gloves, he asked, “Do you guys sip Moscow Mules and bond over anachronistic clothing choices?”

“She's not wearing a houppeland, Hawke,” laughed Fenris, covering his eyes in a sudden bout of affection for the playful grin on Hawke's face.

“Nah, she's just wearing a bra in 51-degree weather.”

“Says the man wearing gym shorts?”

“Says the person who wears gloves in August,” Hawke humorously bit back. “Why do you wear them, anyway?”

Warmth crept up to Fenris's cheeks as he shifted his weight onto the passenger door. The movement pushed the iPod off of his leg and it fell with a soft _flump_ to the floor before lighting up, but the only sound Fenris heard was the escalating rhythm of his own pulse. Somehow, in a matter of seconds, Hawke was able to swing him through a sickening montage of excuses.

“Poor circulation. You're running late,” he muttered, anxious, gazing down at the flashing “8:51 AM” by his boot. He yanked open the door with a little too much force and quickly jumped out of the Jeep, avoiding Hawke's harsh glare as he drew his messenger bag over his shoulder.

As he slammed the door, he could hear the _sorry_ in Hawke's small voice as it distantly said goodbye. He nodded and scurried up to his front door with his breaths heaving fast against his ribs, and though he made a mental note to thank Hawke for the ride later, he didn't look back to see how long Hawke waited in front of his building, car as red as the leaves at his feet. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the feedback! It really keeps a writer writing.
> 
> Root beer with a splash of lemonade actually does taste like Smarties, in case anyone's curious.

“You're sweet on the little broody one.”

“I am?” Hawke didn't bother looking up from the parade of multicolored wires dangling off the side of the low-budget printer that the Arts and Sciences department decided to purchase that morning. “DuPuis somehow expects me to make 120 copies by noon,” he complained, leering at a piece of paper as it elegantly fluttered down to the floor. Not wanting to think of Fenris again, he distracted himself by shuffling the remaining stack of documents between his fingers until he got a paper cut.

“Ow, shit,” he gasped, bringing his hand to his mouth.

Varric snorted. “Well, you can start by plugging that in. That'll probably help.”

“Yeah, why don't you try finding the right plug?”

Unfortunately, Varric totally found the right plug in a fraction of the time that Hawke spent looking for it. “What happened to the actual Xerox machine, though?” he asked, swatting Hawke's hand away to cockily press the on button himself. “I thought I used it last week? It seemed fine.”

Hawke immediately burst into laughter.

“ _Someone stole it_ ,” he gasped, “somebody took it home with them yesterday—”

“Are you kidding me?” chortled Varric, his face beet-red in sudden hysteria, “haha! Uh, that's actually really serious...”

“Hahaha, oh God, it's _so_ serious! The whole department was under investigation all night!”

“What, so they just put it on a dolly and wheeled it through campus like it was no big deal?”

Hawke wiped his eyes and started to laugh again. “No fucking clue. There's no—hahaha—no surveillance of it anywhere—”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Varric shook his head through a face-splitting grin.

The replacement printer made a series of mechanical, depressed sounds before ultimately spitting out a lopsided piece of paper that tore when Hawke tried to grab it. When Varric confidently pressed the button again, the machine's display blinked twice and noisily turned off. Forever.

Hawke cast an exaggerated frown to the pile of wires by his feet.

“Guess you're gonna have to learn what a PDF file is, DuPuis,” he sighed, shoveling the original copies into his rucksack and smirking down at his favorite friend.

They walked out of the copy room and headed out toward the campus tavern, their silence occasionally broken by a stifled snort and the word “Xerox” as they crossed the lawn, all orange and crunchy with leaves that were falling entirely too fast for the young season.

“S'gonna snow a lot,” mumbled Hawke as he pulled his hood up against the breeze and stuffed his hands into his sweater pocket.

Varric made a show of rolling his eyes. “Because of the leaves? No way, the only thing that proves is that it's been stupid windy all month. Unless the trees are psychic or meteorologists in costume. Somehow I don't think either of those are true.”

The tavern was brimming with quasi-depressed students, each with an outdated MacBook and a dwindling pitcher of cheap beer in front of their bleak faces. It was barely noon on a Tuesday and most of them looked like they were already spiraling through the first three stages of drunken grief, wavering between denial and anger as they swayed in the confines of their generic bar stools. Hawke wondered how long he'd have to wait before the inevitable flood of plea bargains monopolized his inbox.

He met the desperate gaze of a junior in his section and smiled inwardly. _I give her two hours,_ he thought, _and I'm not going to respond to her until Friday because everything she needs to know is in the syllabus and I'm so sick of telling her what pages to read..._

Varric interrupted his momentary power trip by jabbing his elbow into his ribs and nodding in the direction of a secluded table in the back.

“Look who's here,” he muttered, a shit-eating grin crinkling the side of his shaven face.

Hawke rubbed the place where Varric's elbow had been. “Hm?” he asked, scanning the chairs along the wall until his gaze trickled onto the small, hooded figure hunched over his very own outdated Dell and a paper cup of (presumably) Sprite. Standing out in the crowd. As usual.

A pang in his chest reminded him that Fenris hadn't spoken to him since he leaped out of his car on Friday morning. When he didn't show up to his Monday class, Hawke had sent him a text asking if he was feeling alright, to which Fenris said “I'm fine.” and failed to respond to anything else for the rest of the night.

Hawke had sent him two apologies over four days: the first for asking about his gloves (“Sorry. I didnt mean to overstep boundaries”) and the last for no reason at all, between the hours of 4 and 5 AM after a particularly lonely dream.

All it said was _Sorry_ and part of Hawke really wanted Fenris to tell him to stop apologizing for nothing because it would've been an excuse to talk to him about something. Anything.

But no, his attempts went unanswered and Hawke had to keep himself occupied with stupid little projects all weekend to refrain from marching down to Josie's Books. He wrote a fun melody on Isabela's keyboard and taught Mittens how to freeze on his haunches, he graded a plethora of abstracts and finally finished his own annotated bibliography for one of his classes. He also shared a six-pack with Merrill after Soc Psych yesterday and showed up to his four-hour graduate seminar on Psychopathology with a BAC of at _least_ .09, but nobody noticed because he spent the whole lecture writing petty lyrics about car accidents, Christmas, and footsteps made of glass.

Varric threw him an unbelievably insensitive smirk and mocked, “See, told you you're sweet on him. I haven't seen you look at anyone that way since the time you thought you had a crush on Daisy.”

“Oh God,” Hawke gagged, “don't _remind_ me. Weirdest fifteen minutes of my life.”

Varric cackled, leaning against the bar as he waited to be served. “I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that this's been going on for longer than fifteen minutes.”

“Maybe,” Hawke watched the tired way that Fenris buried his face into his gloves. He couldn't see the screen from his distance, but he had the creeping suspicion that Fenris was trying to write his abstract early so he could catch up on all the Sociology of Deviance work he missed last month.

He was about to suggest a change of location when the counter girl flirtatiously leaned toward them. “Hey boys,” she sang, resting her knobby elbows on a napkin dispenser by the register. “Lunch or drinks or both?

Hawke said “lunch” while Varric said “drinks,” and they were handed a little metal number tag to take to their table after they split the cost of a beer, a soda, and a massive basket of Cajun fries. When Varric started to walk over to the vacant chair at Fenris's table, Hawke tugged him back by the shoulder strap on his leather jacket and lowly said,

“Yeah, so he hates me today. Let's eat outside or something.”

Varric quirked an eyebrow up to the moon. “The fuck does he hate you? _Nobody_ hates you,” he retorted, laughing incredulously. “It's windy as shit out there. Let's go kiss and make up and you can tell me the whole entire juicy story after he runs away to brood.”

“Wow. Can you be nice?”

“I can be as nice as the weather permits. Suck it up.”

Hawke pursed his lips as he pointed his empty paper cup in the direction of the soda machine. It was a viable excuse. He needed a beverage. Varric could go ahead and break the ice, and he could also break his nose on impact and fall right through it if he pleased. His problem.

Hawke lingered by the soda machine and concentrated really, really hard on pushing the root beer button, then he poured half of it into the grate and filled his cup again to keep himself extra occupied. Then he took his sweet time adding lemonade, tasting the concoction, convincing himself that it was too tart or too beery or too icy before starting again from scratch.

It was only a matter of time before Varric would saunter up back with a mouthful of complaints, anyway. Fenris hated uninvited company. He was busy. He'd probably scowl or stare in silence until his table was vacated, or he'd make up some bullshit about having to go to class two hours early to avoid social interaction like he always did.

Around the third attempt to fill his cup, though, Hawke realized that Varric still hadn't returned. A certain paranoia pricked the hair on the back of his neck and he quickly glanced over his shoulder to see what was going on.

His shoulders fell. Fucking Varric was blabbing away and fucking Fenris looked like he was absolutely fine with the whole uninvited-company-at-his-table thing. He stood there glowering from across the tavern for long seconds before Varric finally met his gaze, rolled his eyes, and waved him over.

“...be a pussy,” was all Hawke heard as he cautiously lowered himself into the chair between them.

“Hawke,” Fenris stated. His laptop was closed.

Hawke choked into his cup as he took a sip. “Fe—” _cough, cough_ “—nris.”

“Good, now that that's outta the way, would you mind explaining the bullshit you keep assigning to this poor kid?”

Just as Varric finished his sentence, the counter girl flirtatiously leaned over their table with their order and winked at them before swaying away. Hawke, suddenly starving, grabbed a handful of fries and responded, “I don't assign anything. That's all on DuPuis.”

“Ah, but you agree it's bullshit.”

Hawke side-eyed Fenris, who was anxiously picking at one of the artsy stickers on his laptop. “It's _total_ bullshit.”

“I-I'll have my essay in tonight,” Fenris muttered. His green eyes pointed everywhere but Hawke.

“You've got til Saturday.”

“I know.”

Hawke shrugged awkwardly ( _yep, totally fucking hates me_ ) and reached for the ketchup at the other edge of the table, shaking it slightly as Varric groaned beside him.

“So Isabela's actually shorter than you,” he cut in conversationally, to Hawke's immense relief.

“She is. She comes to Hawke's shoulders,” said Fenris, “I believe I come up to his chin.”

Hawke's stomach began to twist uncomfortably. “Past my chin,” he quietly corrected, remembering how small Fenris felt against him when they hurried out onto the porch during the STD Free Party. He motioned at the lower side of his jaw and hoarsely added, “Your head's about here when we're standing.”

“On the Hawke Measurement Scale, I'd say you're a solid 5'8!” Varric toasted the air and tipped his head back to accommodate the disgustingly strong craft IPA he ordered, oblivious to the sudden heaviness in the air as Fenris's eyes strayed up from Hawke's collar and finally rested on his gaze.

But Varric continued, “better watch it, Broody. If she knows how tall you are she's gonna wanna know how _long_ you are, too. There's a book about that. It's called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. She's the mouse.”

Fenris didn't respond. He didn't tear his green eyes away, either. They reflected the windows around them. It took a few strained breaths but Hawke finally saw the makings of a warming smile on the corner of his lips, so he allowed himself to relax, offering a grin of his own.

–

_Bzzbzzzt._

Fenris subtly slipped his phone beneath his thigh as he listened to the professor cite articles on white collar crime. The class was awful. The lecture hall carried the distinct aroma of moldy towels. There was a strange, shapeless stain on the floor by the entry door that seemed to grow larger every week, and the person who sat in the seat closest to him unfortunately suffered from a perpetually runny nose.

When the professor turned around to write something on the whiteboard, Fenris sighed and clicked his phone on beneath his folding desktop.

“Can we get coffee later”

He furrowed his eyebrows and, after a swift glance to the front of the room, responded “When?”

His heartbeat quickened like it often did when he saw Hawke's name pop up on his screen. It was the deciding factor that caused him to spend all weekend pointedly ignoring his texts, though he found himself caving before noon on Monday when Hawke had shown concern over his well being. He hadn't wanted to talk to him anymore, and despite skipping their class to avoid seeing him, his last intention was to make him worry.

When Hawke apologized for asking about his gloves, Fenris had to physically turn off his phone to stop himself from texting back. Wearing gloves every day for five years desensitized him to the barrage of questions most people threw his way. He spent the greater part of his teenage years coming up with intricately believable stories to tell, falling through windows, poor blood circulation, a really bad run-in with an electric lawnmower, but by the time his high school diploma arrived in his foster parents' mailbox he'd decided that he owed an explanation to no one. His excuses shifted to disparaging gazes. Walking away from people became his specialty.

Strangers didn't have to know anything, and until Hawke had asked, Fenris never felt inclined to tell the truth.

But he'd wanted to tell Hawke everything, every last detail. He wanted to lance it into his neck with his teeth, to smear it like blood on the upholstery of his old red Jeep, to show him every window he ever fell through and how cold his hands could get beneath his gloves.

_Bzzbzzzt._

“Whenever youre out of class”

Fenris sighed. He cut Hawke out for four days. It didn't matter that Varric broke the silence he'd built, because he knew that he didn't try hard enough to hide. “I'll be out at 5.”

He slid his phone beneath his thigh again and jotted down the notes at the front of the lecture hall, growing exceptionally annoyed with slurry nose to his left. _Tissues exist,_ he thought sourly, his leg shaking slightly at the vibration of a new text, _will you have a cold this whole semester? Blow your nose._

When the professor turned around again, Fenris checked Hawke's message without moving his head down, fighting hard to swallow the lump that developed in his throat.

“Sounds great”

–

After a morbid, mind-numbing, verbatim account of everything expected on next week's exam, the Sociology of Deviance professor dismissed the class four minutes late. Fenris gathered his notebook into his messenger bag and quickly shuffled out of his row, face bent in a muted scowl as he tried not to trip over the guy with the runny nose. Everything about this person was the worst. He didn't even have the decency to retract his floppy feet from the aisle and Fenris almost tripped again on his way to the door as a result.

He clutched his phone tightly as he bolted down the hallway, checking it twice despite the fact that he had no new messages. When he turned a sharp left toward the nearest staircase, he collided head-first into the dark denim jacket of a familiar, 6'2-flat figure and his phone skated hard across the linoleum floor.

“Shit!” cried Hawke as he immediately knelt to pick up the several pieces of Fenris's busted blue case. When he stood up again, he rolled the plastic in his palm with an uneasy wince and nodded at Fenris's gloved hand. “Lemme see that.”

Fenris handed him his phone. “It's alright,” he mumbled.

“Shhh. We need to stop meeting this way.”

The air between them filled with a few brief _clacks_ before Hawke managed to get the case back on. He crinkled his nose as he returned it and said, “it's got a crack on the bottom but it should stay shut. Everything good?”

“Yes. It's fine.”

Hawke's eyes flickered a little in their stare. “I'm asking about you, Fenris,” he said gently.

“ _I'm_ fine, then,” he bit back, pushing past him and through the door leading to the staircase.

They hurried across the lawn, holding their hoods over their heads as the wind beat against their faces like a hollow drummer, keeping perfect time with the claustrophobic rhythm of Fenris's blood. He could hear the patter of Hawke's boots behind him too, off-key, slower than they should be, heavier. Fenris thought they'd be nice to listen to on the few nights the seniors in the apartment beneath his didn't blast their music.

Hawke sped up to open the door for him and had to play doorman for a crowd of giggling blonde girls whose “thank you”s sounded remarkably coquettish for their context, so Fenris lingered by the counter with his hands tangled into his jacket pocket while he waited. They ordered their coffees – _Red-eye, everything you do is red_ – and picked a small table by the door, where all the leaves from outside gathered around the legs of two rustic-looking chairs.

Fenris, surprising himself, was the first to speak.

“Varric said earlier,” he started, then shook his head to correct himself, “sorry. I do not hate you.”

Hawke flashed him a really wanton grin. “Was that because of the whole glove thing? I really don't have to know or anything.”

“Nobody needs to know anything about me, Hawke,” he responded coolly. He watched the honey in Hawke's eyes change shape during a nervous chuckle.

“See, that kinda thing makes people want to know more.”

“Does it?”

“...Indeed.” Hawke grimaced and hissed after he took a sip from his coffee, his brown eyes slanted in mock disdain at the steam rising from the hole at the top of the cup.

They sat in an usually strained silence for a moment before Fenris's heart leaped at the sound of Hawke's phone receiving a new message. Hawke checked it beneath the table with a smile creeping through his trimmed scruff and for no reason at all, Fenris scowled, seeing nothing but red.

 _Who's that?_ the thought chewed through him like wolves. _Stop. Why does everyone touch you?_

But Hawke's smile remained illuminated by the back-light of his mobile phone and his calloused fingers typed away, oblivious to the pallor taking residence in Fenris's cheeks. Another text came in, another heartbeat skipped, and Fenris brought his gloved knuckles to his teeth because he felt like hiding again.

 _Just let me leave if you're going to do that,_ he silently began to plea, but Hawke immediately interrupted,

“Hey, can you get the 19th and 20th off?”

Fenris froze. Hawke's eyes were still fixed to his phone, but his thumb seemed suspended above the keyboard as if awaiting Fenris's response. “Er. Probably,” he rasped, “Why?”

“We're all going up to Varric's brother's cabin. It's like, an hour into the mountains.”

“And?”

Hawke finally looked up at him. “And what?” His smile faded into a look of unabashed perplexity. After a moment of confused silence, his gaze darted around the room, resting leisurely on Fenris's arm as he added, “I'm inviting you.”

That did it. Fenris dragged his hand over his face and groaned lowly, “Why do you insist on my company?”

“I don't know. Because I like talking to you?” Somewhere in his laugh, Fenris detected the slightest hint of uneasiness. “And I like hearing you talk? And you laugh at the stupid shit I say.”

“A lot of people laugh at what you say.”

“Yeah, but your laugh mat—” Hawke squeezed the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

Fenris wrung his hands around the sleeve of his coffee cup. “N-no,” he mewled, “not particularly. You have many friends.”

“Okay. Okay, look,” Hawke leaned forward in his interruption, eyes alight with some intangible emotion that Fenris couldn't quite place, “I like people. I do. Everyone has something fun to bring and I get along with most of them pretty good,” he bounced a little as his phone chirped again, “but I don't usually _talk_ to any of them—What? Stop that—you don't have to believe me.”

Shaking his head, Fenris brought his coffee cup to his lips and winced over its plastic brim. “Assuming I take the days off,” he said slowly, “would your friends mind my going?”

Hawke barked out a laugh. “Would my friends mind me inviting my friend? Hahaha. No—no, they'd be stoked.”

“Is Tally invited?”

“Eh no, but she's probably gonna be the one to cover you, right?” Hawke spun his empty cup on its edge. “Aaaand Isabela's apparently meeting up with some – and I quote – 'nonbinary sex lord' she found on OkCupid. So there's that.”

“Ah.” Fenris sighed. He twisted the fabric of his gloves between his fingers, briefly revealing the shock of bone at his wrists. “C-can I let you know tomorrow night?”

Hawke's shoulders visibly relaxed. “Yeah. Yeah, just call me after work or something.”

They remained in the coffee shop for another two hours, during which Hawke's phone chirped a total of six times. He didn't check a single text, and by the time Fenris had to leave, they'd talked about Europe, buffalo wings, snow, and successfully analyzed the personality defects of an entire table of football players based on their choice of beverage.

“Did you fix your tires yet? Here,” Hawke quickly rummaged through his rucksack before handing over a grey plastic bag. “Let me know if they don't fit and fucking let me know when you get home safe.”

Fenris chuckled warmly. “I live across the street.”

“What's the last word in that sentence?”

“...Street.”

“Yeah. Be careful crossing it.”

Fenris felt the singe of Hawke's gaze on his back as he pushed through the door of the campus coffee shop, so he threw a quick, departing nod over his shoulder. When he got to the crosswalk in front of his dorm complex, he opened the plastic bag to find two boxes of bicycle tubes and a note that said _Just be my friend already!_ written on the back of a gift receipt.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Triggering words are used? I don't think they warrant a true warning, please don't hesitate to tell me if I'm wrong.

Fenris locked his bike to the rail outside of the Hanged Man a little after 9 PM, when the October winds picked up enough to make him wish he'd brought a thicker coat. It didn't take long to find Hawke in the subdued Wednesday night crowd, sitting in the back between Merrill, Varric, and a few empty beer glasses, his face slightly obscured by the collar of his denim jacket and his strong hands spinning his phone on the surface of their table as if they were impatiently awaiting a text.

Because she noticed everything, Merrill was the first to see him approach. “We missed you in class the other day, Fenris,” she greeted. “I thought for sure that you died from all that drinking on Friday.”

“I am very much alive, but your concern is endearing.”

Hawke, whose face immediately lifted the moment Fenris spoke, used his foot to push out the chair across from him. “Want a drink?” he asked.

Fenris shrugged then declined, which elicited a loud groan from Varric. “You too? These two have been nursing the same glass of ginger ale for an hour.”

“Aw, we almost killed a six pack Monday,” defended Hawke through a meaningful smile, “I actually care about the state of my liver.”

“Grow some _balls_ , holy shit,” Isabela sat down at a vacant chair with two cocktails in her dark hands. She shoved one into Hawke's arms and shook the table until he surrendered in the form of a begrudging sip.

Fenris had to suppress a grimace when Hawke's blonde-haired friend appeared beside them, holding a drink of his own.

“You're Fenris, right?” the blonde guy asked. Fenris thought he looked extremely yellow in the dim bar light and hated how close his chair was to Hawke's.

“Yes.”

“Alright, well. I'm Anders. Hi.”

Quirking an eyebrow, Fenris bitterly thought _I know who you are_ as he nodded an acknowledgment in strained politeness. He'd become acquainted with the sort of person Anders was through the annoying comments he left on Isabela's twice-a-day Facebook updates. Most recently, Fenris had found himself rolling his eyes over his diatribe on a social issue that he wasn't remotely involved in, but the square root of his disdain was attributed to the guy's infuriating habit of “liking” everything involving Hawke on Isabela's Timeline.

It was through lurking Anders' profile that Fenris had learned what Hawke looked like without a shirt, and though he'd secretly saved the picture to his laptop like a lunatic, he'd gone to bed furiously questioning every event that could have led to Hawke standing half-naked in an Ikea standard kitchen that didn't belong to him.

Anders strayed his yellow eyes down the length of Fenris's neck, but Hawke seemed to notice because he quickly grabbed the deck of cards at the edge of the table and declared “so, poker again, I'm dealing,” to distract him.

Merrill won the first two rounds and eventually agreed to take shots of tequila to celebrate. Once again, Fenris declined any invitation to drink, though the feeling of Anders' eyes on his chin made him rethink his decision to come out at all.

It wouldn't have been much of an issue if Anders didn't keep leaning over to whisper something to Hawke every two minutes, watching Fenris like an owl in the the dead of night, his gaze simultaneously vacant and accusatory as it studied his face. Whatever he said didn't seem to rouse any reaction from Hawke though, so Fenris, tugging at the hem of his gloves, actively tried to shrug it off.

It was only when Hawke disappeared to the bathroom that Fenris felt entirely scrutinized.

“So, what's the excuse?” Anders asked him. He sounded sincere and entirely unassuming, the way a doctor would when asking a patient about their recent medical history.

Fenris frowned. “Pardon?”

“Your— never mind.”

Isabela leaned halfway across the table and grabbed Anders' hands with her own. “No, no no no, go _on_ ,” she drawled, “are you about to ask him where he got his scars? Because _Aveline_ said that _Anora_ said that he fell through a window.”

Fenris stiffened. “Er, wh—I—”

“Ahh it's none of my business,” cut in Anders, waving an apologetic hand and taking a swig from his cocktail. From the corner of his eye, Fenris could see Merrill shaking her head while she used an empty shot glass to cover the blush on her face.

“No,” Fenris said sharply, throwing his cards into the stack. “It really isn't.”

As much as he wanted to go home, Fenris managed to last an hour through several more of Merrill's surprising wins and actually cleaned the stakes with a full house of his own. Against his boot he could feel the periodic restlessness of Hawke's left foot as it bounced beneath the table, and when he got up again to lead Varric out the backdoor for a smoke, Fenris followed with his hands curled together in a knot.

“So did you get that weekend off?”

A lighter sparked twice in the corner of Fenris's eye before the scent of Varric's cigarette filled the crisp air. “For Bart's thing? That's a Friday,” he interjected.

“He knows what I mean.”

Fenris shuffled his feet. “When would we return?”

“Is that a yes?” Hawke grinned. He paused to decline a cigarette that Varric offered before answering, “we'll be back Saturday night.”

“Or Sunday morning, depending on how you look at life,” chimed Varric, exhaling a long stream of smoke that circled around their heads like a wafty halo. He leaned over to mutter something to Hawke. Fenris could have sworn he heard his concerned voice say “I'll get us back, you're fine,” but disregarded it to casually glance at his phone.

“So did you get the days off or no?”

Fenris paused. “Yes,” he said slowly, shaking his head a little at the sudden, boyish glee spreading over Hawke's dark features. “But I'm not sure about spending—”

“It'll be fun,” cut in Hawke. His eyes looked like the flickering viscera of a jack-o-lantern. Somewhere behind them, Fenris heard a door slam shut in Varric's wake.

“Er.”

The volume in Hawke's voice dropped to a waver when he spoke again, sending a chill down Fenris's spine that left him feeling at once giddy and vilely weak. “I swear it'll be fine,” Hawke darted his eyes around the vacant bar patio, “aaand I could find you a ride back if you hate it.”

“Could you?”

“Abso _lutely_.”

“Who is going?”

Hawke shrugged, idly bringing his watery cocktail up to his mouth. He took a sip and immediately cringed, muttering “Ew I don't want this” before throwing the drink, glass and all, into the nearest trash can. “Uh, I dunno. Varric's brother usually has like, ten random people over whenever we go up.”

“Is it just you and Varric going, then?”

“Yep. And Bel and Merrill.”

 _And Anders?_ “Just you, Varric, your room mate, and Merrill.”

“Yes,” laughed Hawke. His eyebrows were raised and his bottom lip turned colors beneath his teeth. “And the down-to-fuck kid from OkCupid. I think.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

Like it'd done all night, the thought of going rolled in rivulets around Fenris's head. He watched Hawke watch him and he could feel the gears turning on his own face, cranking slightly as they worked through the realization that Fenris, in all his curious and secretive glory, actually wanted to go.

The mountains were nice. Their summits were already shining with snow. Hawke was standing with his slippers tilted pigeon-style, and when he smiled, when he said “you don't have to if you don't want to” and completed the thought with “c'mon Fenris, my tail's wagging over here,” Fenris dropped his blushing face to the cracks in the pavement below his feet.

“Alright,” he sighed, resolved, biting the fabric at his thumb. Hawke had a strange way of wording his requests. “Alright. What do I bring?”

–

Hawke seriously didn't fucking expect Fenris to actually agree to go.

In all fairness, Hawke seriously didn't fucking expect Fenris to do a lot of the things that he did. Like drink vodka (he was still somewhat bitter about Fenris's hidden penchant for Moscow Mules). Or laugh at lowbrow puns. Or draw pictures of trees, or cite passages from the Qu'ran, or send him texts in the middle of the night asking how his thesis was going when he knew damn well that it wasn't going well at all.

They walked back into the Hanged Man while Hawke described the weather in enough detail to cause him to accidentally follow Fenris into the bathroom, where he awkwardly pretended to pee to pass it off like it was an intentional move. Fenris caught him on it though, laughing and shaking his snowy head as they rejoined the group in slow stride. Hawke jokingly drove his elbow into his ribs to get him to stop, but it only made him laugh more, and Hawke had to swallow his heart because it threatened to leap right the fuck out through his teeth.

Anders shot him a particularly Anders-y look when he sat down again, but just as he was about to ask “what's up?”, Fenris slung his bag over his shoulder and made a show of checking the time on his phone.

Hawke's face fell. “Heading out?”

“I am.”

“Want me to walk you out?”

“I think I can manage,” Fenris said politely. He waved at Merrill, who was drunkenly wiggling her fingers at him as she leaned her tiny body over a recent accumulation of empty shot glasses.

 _At least one of us stuck to sobriety_ , Hawke thought as she giggled “toodles, Fenris. Hahaha, toodly-doo. Oh gosh!” and knocked over Varric's glass of ale.

Fenris pursed his lips, nodded at the mess, and spun on his heel. Hawke watched his narrow back push through the light crowd, bringing someone's watered-down cocktail up to his mouth.

“Child abuse.”

Hawke whipped his head to the side. His neck throbbed with the burst of a vessel in the sudden movement and the drink splashed over his fist.

“It's a thought,” Anders muttered, his eyes following Fenris across the bar. The kid paused for a second as if he'd heard them. “Maybe an accident. Doubtful, though, people are more inclined to explain accidents than that.”

“Mmm no,” Isabela sighed as she wrapped her arm around Hawke's steadily tensing shoulders. “Some people don't talk about accidents...”

Hawke's vision began to blur. “The _fuck_ —?”

But Isabela continued, “like, he's not exactly white. Or straight, right? So—”

“So what,” Anders bit, “he's probably straight. Wait, are you suggesting hate crime?”

Hawke swallowed hard as the bar door slammed shut.

“Pf, I mean—like—Okay. So in case you haven't noticed how col—”

In the haze of his ringing ears, Hawke heard the hollow scrape of Isabela's glass against the table and shook himself out from her hold. She continued behind him, her voice drunk and all-knowing in its argument, but he didn't hear another word as he bolted up from his chair.

None of it was any of their business, Fenris fell through a window, and the air outside offered a welcome contrast to the nervous heat collecting strong across his cheeks. Fenris had just fastened his u-lock to his bike frame. He didn't look up until Hawke's shadow stretched over his crouching frame.

Hawke stared at him as he slowly rose to his feet, counting the clouds in his eyes.

“What is it?”

“N-nothing,” he stumbled. He felt Fenris stiffen and distantly became aware of the hands he'd placed on the sides of his shoulders.

Fenris inched out of his touch. “I have to go, Hawke.”

“Yeah, okay,” he instantly unclenched his fingers and stuffed them into his pockets. “Hey, can you call when you get home?”

“Er. I suppose. Why?”

Hawke shrugged, a gaunt chuckle straining through his teeth. “I dunno, so I know you're alive.”

He stepped back as Fenris swung a thin leg over the saddle of his bike. When he nodded, Hawke let himself relax and leaned against the brick wall of the Hanged Man, eyes fixed to the blinking red light on the back of the bike as Fenris rode into the street.

It didn't take long for Varric to appear beside him with Isabela's pack of American Spirits balanced on his stocky palm.

“Well _I_ seriously doubt it's any of that shit,” he said lightly.

Hawke nodded and brought a cigarette up to his mouth. Fenris's red glow finally disappeared from sight. “Got a light?” he asked, and muttered his thanks when Varric held up a flame.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for everything. I'm going to try to edit the past couple of chapters (and this one) sometime tomorrow.

Fenris bounced from foot to foot as the early-morning dew settled neatly on his face. It wasn't as early as it could have been, but he struggled to maintain his balance because an unfamiliar throb of excitement prevented him from getting much sleep the night before. Yawning, he checked his phone. Nothing had arrived since Hawke's last text of “Be there in 10”, and if the intensity of his heartbeat was any navigational indicator, Fenris suspected that he'd be seeing an approaching red blur within a matter of seconds.

After he'd called Hawke to confirm that he made it home from the bar—a conversation that somehow lasted over an hour—Fenris found himself in his company far more often than usual. Hawke started showing up at Josie's Books under the guise of walking Mittens. He even bought a Terry Pratchett book while his dog verbally assaulted a curious young couple at the register. He invited him to go to record stores and Taco Bell, where he insisted on adding verde sauce to everything short of his Baja Blast, and the other day he practically chased Fenris across campus for the sole purpose of showing him a particularly colorful leaf.

Hawke also developed the distressing habit of calling every day. It started off as simple check-ins, things like “hey, let's meet at the tavern” or “what shitty page did DuPuis tell you to read? I have a sophomore sending me death threats and I don't feel like pulling up the syllabus,” but quickly escalated to engaging conversations that stole many hours of comfort from his evenings.

Fenris had succumbed to a wreck of destitution on the one night Hawke failed to call. He'd paced his 126-square-foot dorm and drank the bottle of Pinot Noir that Tally bought for him on their way home from work that day, silencing his phone in periodic bouts of passive-aggressive pride under the assumption that Hawke would eventually try to reach him and berate himself when his only answer was “the person you have reached, _Er. Fenris_ , is not available now”. It had taken two hours to mentally disengage himself from Hawke's existence, even less to convince himself that Hawke's interest in their “friendship” had waned. Fenris checked his empty call log three times before he allowed his paranoia to manifest though a scribbled, shaky drawing of the clouded night sky. He tore the picture up into exactly 64 pieces before throwing it away.

When he'd gathered enough drunken courage to make the phone call himself, Fenris learned that Hawke had fallen asleep while writing an outline for his graduate thesis. He'd sounded tiredly enthusiastic, his clear voice incensed with sleep, cooing _“Ha, aww Fenris, you called me,”_ during momentary silences before Fenris apologized and clicked the end button in crippling panic. Hawke instantly texted “I really like you calling” but Fenris, after chucking his phone across the room, spent the rest of the night hiding beneath his pillows and wishing that he never laid eyes on Hawke at all.

It was terrible, the way the velocity of his breaths relied on Hawke's smile. It glowed through texts and calls, in dreams that caused him to Google comparable universities to transfer to, ones that offered his program, would house him in a similar dorm, would accept his credits with minimal question, would be free of propagated crushes and the heedless insecurity that came with them.

Still, when Hawke persuaded him to go to Target the very next day and made a cheeky joke about the abbreviation on the bus ticker, Fenris completely forgot about everything but the lines that fanned in jest from the corners of his golden eyes.

As if on cue, Fenris's lungs folded into themselves and the red Jeep pulled up along the curb where he stood with his messenger bag and pillow. He tightened his grip around multiple textures of fabric as he focused on the movement of the tires, suddenly terrified of the fact that he allowed himself to commit to spending the next thirty-six hours with the one person he should have avoided from the start.

When the car parked inches away from his boot, Hawke greeted him by tumbling through the driver's door and shouting, “gimme a second, gotta play Tetris in the trunk!”

Fenris tore his blurring gaze from the word “Goodyear” in order to nod at Varric, who was waving at him from the window of the backseat, but he wasn't able to look at Hawke until he heard his crackling voice ask “hey, you good?” from beneath the open trunk door.

With a calculated affirmation, Fenris walked over to him, holding his breath at the sight of Hawke's strong back sloping beneath the stretch of his black quilted jacket. He was wearing his flannel shirt beneath it, and as he bent deeper into the trunk Fenris counted the number of plaid lines in the small space between the hem of his coat and his brown leather belt. His eyes strayed further down, flickering and careful, landing on the denim bulge of his wallet on their own accord, noting a thinning patch along the bottom edge of his pocket. Fenris hissed as his ankle suddenly twisted over the curb.

“Wow, careful,” breathed Hawke as he reached for Fenris's bag, outstretching his free forearm in a placid attempt to break his fall. He was also sporting a gray knit cap, apparently. “Got everything?”

Fenris nodded and watched Hawke's hands skitter across a guitar case. They paused for a second before wedging his messenger bag on top of a large plastic bin labeled _CAMPING SHIT_.

“Tent?” he asked, voice crinkled in exhaustion and slightly strained in its attempt to mask the pain rolling through his foot.

“And expired bug spray, a la Bel, even though it's freezing and _there won't be any bugs_.”

A heap of blankets grumbled from the passenger seat.

“There'll be tons of spiders though,” Varric quipped, his slitted eyes darting between them from across the trunk, “really fucking huge spiders that'll chase you if you look at them the wrong way.”

Fenris laughed but Hawke cut him off, his face losing color fast, “No, I wish he was kidding. They're _monsters_.”

“You're afraid of spiders?”

“Uh, you will be too,” called Hawke as he slammed the trunk shut and headed back to the driver's seat. Fenris limped up next to Mittens in the back, smiling when Hawke continued, “like, you haven't seen these fuckers. They're ridiculous. I never want to leave my house because of them,” over the rumbling growl of the engine.

Isabela stretched her arms up over the back of her seat and tried to say “they really suck” through a gaping yawn, then dropped her head onto Hawke's shoulder with a grouchy mumble that ended with the word “coffee”.

“We're getting Merrill first,” Hawke told her, exaggeratedly nuzzling her hair in a way that made Fenris feel claustrophobic, “but yeah, Dunkin Donuts right after.”

She lifted her head. “No, I want Starbucks.”

“Arghhh, _why?_ ”

“Because it's October and I lost two pounds so I could gain five without feeling like a deflated twat.”

“But—” Hawke paused to pull his seatbelt across his chest, sniffing a little as if he was about to sneeze, “fine. So we'll get Merrill, and then we'll drive ten minutes away from the highway to get Starbucks.”

Varric scoffed from the other end of the backseat. “And then we'll drive seven minutes _toward the wrong side of the highway_ to stop at Dunkin Donuts to get an actual cup of coffee.”

“Yes. Good.” Hawke sneezed into his arm. “It's not like I pay for gas or anything.”

Fenris smiled as the car rolled onto the main road, instantly feeling more comfortable than he thought he could while listening to the three of them bicker. A part of him still called them strangers, particularly Isabela, who seemed callously incapable of recognizing physical, social, and conversational boundaries, but the certain thrash in his stomach at an allergy-ridden grumble told him that Hawke wasn't a stranger at all.

They picked up Merrill from her very socioeconomically depressed neighborhood and took turns trying to fit her inexplicably large suitcase in the trunk, chastising her about how they were only going to be out for one night until she burst out into hysterical, embarrassed tears. She spent a good thirty seconds burying her face into Hawke's apologetic hug, begging them to let her consolidate her belongings into a smaller package while Mittens tried to bolster through the door in excitement. Fenris took it upon himself to offer her a supportive glance through the window despite his rampant thoughts of _it really isn't the end of the world, let go of him_ , but she didn't fully calm down until they got to Starbucks, where Hawke insisted on buying her a chocolate croissant and a large pumpkin spice latte with whip.

He bought one for himself, too. So did Varric. When they didn't stop at Dunkin Donuts for an 'actual cup of coffee,' Fenris laughed and laughed until Isabela threw her cardboard drink sleeve into his face.

The ride up to Varric's brother's cabin was strangely soothing. Some of it was spent cackling at benign things like an elk sniffing an elk-crossing sign on the shoulder of the highway, some of it was spent silent and tired with a Jawbreaker album filtering through the speakers. It was cold because the two back windows were cracked down for Mittens, who periodically tumbled between Fenris and Varric's laps in order to stick his face out into the late October air. Occasionally Fenris heard the slapping of his drooly chops in the drive-wind and grinned vaguely to himself.

At one point, after Varric woke them up by shrieking “HEY COW!” into a herd of grazing cattle, Isabela turned around in the passenger seat to say “I'm surprised you're here,” to which Fenris shrugged and focused his attention to the barren trees darting past his window. She continued, “no seriously, you're the last guy in the universe I expected to come” and waved until he looked over again.

Fenris quirked his eyebrows at her incredibly poor syntax. “Er. I like the mountains.”

“Really? Hmm, I think you like more than _mountains_ , kitten.”

Merrill giggled next to him before giving him a pat on his leg. He shuddered at the uninvited touch, but she didn't seem to mind as she retracted her hand to subtly hide the leak on the side of her coffee cup. “Oh, Fenris, it's quite alright. I never leave my house either, not really.”

“That is _such_ bullshit,”

“Ohmygod what _bullshit_ ,”

“I smell some caca del torooo,”

Hawke, Isabela, and Varric all cried out simultaneously as Merrill shielded her cheeks with her wiry fingers. “Oh, okay,” she meowed, “forget I said any of that, Fenris. Except it being quite alright.”

Fenris widened his eyes in mild disbelief, entertained and also thoroughly taken aback by how each statement encompassed the personalities of everyone in the car. Even Mittens barked, but it was overshadowed by Isabela's holler of “THERE'S SNOW ON THEM!” as the car accelerated up the twisting slope leading out of the foothills.

Leaning slightly into the middle of the backseat, Fenris saw the faint trace of snow-capped peaks perforating through pockets of pale, smoky clouds along the edge of the windshield. A grin tugged again at his lips and he squinted in wonder at the landscape before them, both jagged and rolling, dotted with reds and browns that made the lines of snow appear that much more important.

“Ooh, Fenris, you smell very nice. Is that lavender?”

And with the quirky hum of Merrill's voice against his hair, the wonder quickly dissolved. Fenris slumped back into his corner, glowering and folding his arms as he curtly responded “Yes.”

“He smells _great_ ,” conceded Isabela through a wry smile that Fenris could only detect by the inflection in her voice. “Detergent, puppet? Or do you just sweat flowers?”

Fenris didn't respond.

“Lush has a bath bomb that smells like— _wait!_ Oh my god, when's your birthday?”

“Sunday,” interrupted Hawke from the driver's seat, and Fenris's breath stopped dead in his lungs because he hadn't mentioned his birthday more than once, six weeks ago.

“Aww! It's _Sunday_?! Happy birthday!” She jabbed Hawke's bicep with a tight fist. “Why didn't you _tell me_?”

“ _Ow, fuck_ , was I supposed to?”

“Yes!” Isabela hit him again.

“You didn't ask! Ow, stop doing that. _Fuck, stop_ , why're you still—?”

“Because—I—feel—like—an—ass—hole!”

“He doesn't even have a bathtub—”

“THAT'S NOT THE POINT, GARRETT MALCOLM!”

_Garrett Malcolm?!_

“Yes, Fenris,” Hawke rasped, sarcastic and matter-of-factly, glancing at him through the rear view mirror while he stuck his elbow up to prevent Isabela from hitting him again, “that's a thing. Garrett Malcolm Hawke. Wanna guess what my dad's name was?”

Fenris found himself pining after the shining reflection of Hawke's eyes as they flicked back down to the road. “W-was it Malcolm?”

“Haha, how'd you know?”

Somewhere beneath the folds of Mittens' fat, Fenris could hear the muffled tone of Varric's laughter. “Did you seriously go months without knowing his first name?” He asked, veering his head through an opening in the fur. “Jesus, that's a record.”

“Nobody bothered to tell me.”

“It's in the syllabus, Fenris,” groaned Hawke, glancing again at him in the mirror, “like, it's literally _underlined_.”

“I assumed your name was Hawke, Hawke.”

“Who's even named _Hawke_?” Isabela shot upright and landed one last jab into Hawke's arm while his guard was down. “Like, nobody thinks oh hey, let's name our kid a—Ow! _No, no no no no_ —stop—okay, okay, ow, stop—”

Fenris looked over in time to see Merrill wedge her hopeful hand between the front seats. When it did nothing to break up the slapping fight, she used it to steal Hawke's latte from the cup holder and politely chirped, “I think I'd believe Hawke's name was Hawke if my name was anything like 'Fenris'” before taking a sip.

“So _is_ your real name Fenris?”

“Er,” Fenris frowned, not knowing what to make of the question, “is Varric your real name?”

Varric grinned. “It sure is!”

“It isn't particularly normal.”

“It is in Germany,” he laughed. “I don't know where the fuck your relatives are from, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say _Fenris_ isn't particularly normal in any first, second, or third-world society.”

“It's—ahh-ahhh—” Hawke sneezed again, “Fenris is a Nordic thing.”

Varric nodded in mock enlightenment. “Well no shit. No offense, Broody, but you don't look remotely Nordic no matter how white you make your hair.”

Hawke said something that sounded like “I'm starving,” but Isabela's voice rang louder:

“Kitten, what _are_ you?”

Fenris sunk low into the backseat and brought his hood over his ears. The conversation was starting to stray into uncomfortable territory. For a moment he considered telling them all the truth to lighten his own tension for the remainder of the car ride – no, he didn't know where his parents were from or why his name was Fenris when his immediate ethnicity didn't 'look remotely Nordic,' and they weren't the first people to ask. Countless concerned elementary school teachers cornered him with questions about his home life, just as countless concerned high school therapists cornered him with questions about his gloves and scars.

As his mouth curled around an acceptable excuse, Hawke turned up the volume of the radio. It was a song that Isabela knew, or at least Fenris suspected such because she immediately started belting out the lyrics in a shrill, wayward manner that forced Varric and Merrill to exchange wincing expressions, and soon enough the whole car forgot what they'd previously tried to pry into.

Fenris sighed and allowed himself to relax as the Jeep made a slight right onto an exit. The road was bumpy, its asphalt replaced by dusty gravel, making Varric moan wildly about his overflowing bladder. Isabela was still singing, Merrill was tugging Mittens' ears in turn, and when Fenris caught Hawke's gaze again in the rearview mirror he nodded his thanks and froze at the understanding that melted through the honey of Hawke's eyes.

–

Isabela deepened her frown.

“Can you fucking _stop it_?”

“No, dude!”

Hawke tightened his fingers on her shoulders and used her as a grounding point while he shifted his body weight to the tips of his toes. “It's just--” he inhaled deeply, disregarding the shit out of Isabela's groans as he bounced in unabashed glee. “It smells like forty pounds of cured meat—I'm so fucking hungry—”

Varric's brother threw his stout arms around the two of them. “Cured meat? Where?!”

“What do you mean _where_?”

As it turned out, Bart, with his half-empty bottle of Knob Creek, stereotypical hiking boots, lumberjack coat and manly-as-shit beard, was _not_ curing forty pounds of pork. Nor was he curing forty pounds of beef, smoking a brisket, shaving bacon, chopping wood, or harvesting maple syrup to marinate ribs with.

“We're vegetarians now,” he said conversationally, handing Hawke the whiskey as a surrogate welcome present. “Where the hell's my brother?”

“Taking a piss in your bathroom,” Hawke laughed into the nose of the bottle. “The fuck do you mean vegetarians?”

“Vegetarians as in _vegetarians_. Gimme that. I didn't say drink _all_ of it!”

Hawke made a show of frowning as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Okay, so we're leaving,” he stated, turning on his heel and laughing heartily when Fenris's first reaction was to take him seriously.

Jesus _fuck_ , the mountains were freezing. They weren't even that high in them, half a mile up at the most, but the temperature was a solid fifteen degrees colder than it was when they left stupid Starbucks and Hawke totally envied Fenris for his natural predilection for gloves. All the trees were already naked and though most of the snowfall happened at faraway peaks, Bart's driveway was littered with piles of white frost that told of all the local weather extremes.

_Or a flourishing coke addiction_ , Hawke thought, laughing to himself as he hauled Merrill's luggage out of the trunk.

Varric reappeared to help him pile their stuff on the edge of Bart's two-acre property, where a fire pit stood between a creepy, spider-infested shed and a broken trailer that everyone, at one point or another, probably had sex in. Fenris was silent the whole time, his green eyes wide and his shoulders shivering with an occasional chill, so Hawke tried to make as much noise as possible to distract him while they set up the tent.

“Varric, Bart's a vegetarian,” he said worriedly as he took a joined pole from Fenris's shaking fingers.

“Is he? Give him a week.”

“Okay, but we're here now.”

Varric shrugged and pulled a flask out of thin air. “Ahhh whatever, someone's bound to show up with hot dogs or some shit later, and Merrill already found the Bisquick.”

“She did? Ha, thanks—” Hawke took a swig from the flask and handed it to Fenris, who paused slightly before taking one as well. “You think she'll come get us when they're done?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, a steadily increasing electric buzz ricocheted off the tree barks around them. Fenris jumped at the noise, glancing nervously at Hawke before pulling his hood back to free his periphery.

“S'fine,” Hawke muttered lowly, bringing his fingertips to the space between Fenris's shoulder blades in an idle motion of comfort. The contact immediately sent his senses into overdrive, filling them with lavender and cold cotton as he gently scratched against the divot of Fenris's spine. He was so still, motionless save for the fingers he wrung together, and Hawke did everything in his power to keep himself from catching them with his own. He could barely feel Fenris breathing beneath the fabric. When he dropped his hand back to his side, he could barely feel himself breathing, too.

Hawke cleared his throat and said, “they've got the cart out,” wincing when his voice came out sounding winded.

Bart owned a solar-powered golf cart that he used to maneuver himself across his property because he believed that walking was beneath him, and it was currently being operated by Isabela, some moderately attractive blonde person who didn't seem to fit any sort of gender specifics _whatsoever_ , and a little four-year-old girl named Ilsa who leaped right off her seat (while the _cart was moving_ \--Hawke almost had a heart attack right fucking there) and threw her arms around Varric's descending neck.

“Uncle Vah-wuck! Uncle Vah-wuuuuck!”

Hawke grinned and leaned in toward Fenris. “That's Ilsa, his niece,” he explained. “She's a little trip.”

“Ah,” Fenris whispered, looking up at him with a small, uncomfortable smile lingering on his lips. Hawke noticed with an affectionate chill that his cheeks were slightly pink from the cold. “Who is the blonde one?”

“No clue. Wait, is Bel's hand—?”

“Yes,” coughed Fenris immediately. “Yes, it certainly is.”

They turned away from the cart to hide their awkward chuckles while Varric spun his niece around until she threatened to throw up on him. OkCupid apparently paid off. The person was attractive and clearly drinking every inappropriate finger that Isabela had placed on their lap, and Hawke hoped, from the bottom of his already-almost-kinda-tipsy heart, that they had enough decency to refrain from heavy petting until they were out of everyone's immediate line of sight.

Hawke snapped his head up and smiled broadly when he heard a soft gasp. Ilsa had finally noticed him.

“ _Hawke!_ ”

The little girl grappled at the air like her hands were teensy lobster pincers until Hawke took her from Varric's arms. “Ahhh! Holy sh— you're getting _huge_! What's he feeding you?!”

“Vegetables!”

_Oh. Right_. “Wow! _Vegetables?_ That sounds so cool!” 

Because he'd spent the better part of his childhood babysitting two drooling, snotty brats that shared his stakes in the family's life insurance policy, Hawke found it exceptionally easy to get along with children of all ages and strangely enjoyed the shit out of their company whenever he found himself in it. Ilsa was a particularly awesome girl because she liked to build mines with Legos and her favorite animals were beetles and komodo dragons, though Hawke suspected that was the direct result of being born with Tethras blood.

He brushed a mess of orange curls away her bubbly face and dipped her closer to Fenris.

“Who's that?” She asked, pointing so extensively that she jammed her finger right into Fenris's cheek. Hawke's heart twisted into a thousand knots when Fenris instantly broke into laughter.

“I am Fenris,” he told her, comically widening his gorgeous fucking green eyes while he shook her hand in mock cordiality. “And you, miss?”

“I am Ilsa,” she responded in an adopted, equally sovereign voice.

“Ilsa! A pleasure to meet you, miss.” Christ, he even bowed.

“Thank you, sir,” she replied. Royalty. The little shit. She tried to bow too but couldn't because of the angle she was in, so Hawke bent them both forward before they walked up to the golf cart where Isabela, thank God, had both her hands on the steering wheel.

“Kay, so Merrill made pancakes and some weird sweet apple thing. Also this is Z.”

“Hi,” Hawke said as he slid into the space next to Fenris. It was a tight fit and he couldn't set Ilsa down anywhere but his knee.

The golf cart sputtered and groaned beneath the weight of five and a half people. Isabela's driving was awful and clearly conditioned by years of driving a lofty sedan, so every turn lasted much longer than it should have and left skids of damage in its wake.

Hawke idly picked a blade of grass from Ilsa's hair while she chattered on about fireflies to anybody who'd listen. He tried to encourage her, but he found it hard to concentrate because his entire left side felt like it was in flames, burning and tingling against Fenris, who didn't seem to notice that every movement he made caused an audible rift in Hawke's disintegrating breathing pattern.

“Oh, you should never shake the jar,” Fenris calmly explained to the child, “and always, _always_ remember to let them free after two minutes.”

“Two minutes?”

Hawke balled his hands into fists and glanced down at Fenris, his lungs caving under the pendulous sense of longing slowly creeping down his chest.

“Yes. Exactly two, lest they become lonely.” Fenris was leaning forward, his face radiant and his arms folded across his chest in what Hawke assumed was an attempt to keep warm.

“Why? Why would they be lonely?”

Fenris chuckled, his teeth chattering slightly as he subconsciously tilted into Hawke's body heat. “Well, wouldn't you become lonely if someone put you in a jar for a long time?”

Ilsa furrowed her brow and tried to wrap her four-year-old brain around the concept of time, which was physically impossible for a child her age to do. Hawke shifted her weight a little and softly clarified, “let them out after you count to ten ten times.”

“Count to ten ten times?”

“Yes,” he conceded, offering a heavy smile in response to the one present on Fenris's face. He wanted to wrap him up tight against him, kiss his forehead, explain the basics of learning development to him because he clearly never took a course in early childhood cognition. “If you count to ten, and do it ten times, the fireflies won't miss their daddies.”

Ilsa gasped and vigorously nodded her head.

Strained, Hawke tore his eyes off Fenris's profile and instead focused on Bart's porch, where Merrill was dressed in an oversized apron, clutching a whisk and glaring at her phone while she paced. Ilsa hopped off the golf cart before it came to a stop (once again sending Hawke into an internal meltdown) and ran up the wooden stairs to mooch a ride to the kitchen on Merrill's shoulders.

“Merrill's an angel from Jesus and God,” Varric grinned, stepping down from his seat and cracking his back. “It smells like a Denny's on a Tuesday night!”

Hawke watched his retreating back, furiously aware of the fact that Fenris was still shivering against his side despite their cue to eat. “Did you bring a thicker jacket?” He asked, voice hoarse and quiet. His hand twitched slightly between them.

“Y-yes. It's in the car.”

Hawke sighed as he felt a chill transfer through Fenris's arms. “Can you remind me to grab it after brunch?”

With a nod, Fenris replied “is this considered brunch?” and Hawke synced his breathing with the sound of his footsteps as he traced the scent of cinnamon and rye whiskey back to Bart's kitchen.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The longest chapter in the world again. Sorry. I dressed up as Tallis for Halloween and had an identity crisis - the next chapter will come a lot sooner. Thank you all for your kind words.
> 
> (Awaiting edit)

Brunch was slightly awkward after Bart decided to introduce himself as the Head Of This House, Varric's Older Brother, Who Doesn't Take Shit From Nobody And I Have About Twelve Rifles In This Room So Just Go Ahead And Try Me. Fingernails scratched against denim and for a moment Hawke had the terrifying notion that Fenris regretted his decision to come, but thankfully Z was a chatty, blonde box of worms just waiting for a chance to speak. The spotlight leaked right off of Fenris's stuttering major and instead fell upon a pair of Spanish leather boots available on Amazon Prime for like, forty bucks, and Fenris was able to enjoy his apple cobbler in peace while Hawke's stomach shifted to accommodate all the fucking butterflies that developed every time he ducked his head.

It took Hawke less than an hour to get tipsy on Bart's seemingly endless supply of whiskey. He would've felt bad about it if Merrill wasn't already light years ahead of him, breaking dishes as she scraped pancakes into a giant black garbage bag and yelling “ _WHY_ IS MAPLE SYRUP MADE OF THE STICKIEST THINGS?” whenever her butter knife clanked to the floor. He offered to help her twice before physically removing her from the sink, and when she stomped away to “find the miserably abandoned puppy” Fenris appeared in the place where she previously stood.

Poor Fenris. He was such a helper, bringing Hawke handfuls of plates and silverware while wearily nodding to another one of Ilsa's operatic renditions of Let It Go. Hawke forgot to mention that in addition to being cute, four-year-old girls with curly orange hair were the most annoying things in Christendom and the twitch in Fenris's eye was telling of his rapidly declining patience. Hawke thought it was delightful.

He slid his glass of Knob Creek across the counter and put on his most charming smile. “Headache,” he quietly drawled, adjusting a pan on the drying rack, “s'good. Drink.”

Fenris crinkled his nose down at the smell, so Hawke impatiently shook his head and repeated “ _drink_ , Fenris” until the glass was empty and Fenris's cheeks were red.

“How d—” _cough, cough, cough_ “—how do you drink this straight?”

Hawke shrugged. “You can't? It's the same shit we had at my place.” _Add fifteen dollars to the price tag, anyway._

“It is?” _cough, cough_ “W-was I drunk at the time?”

“Very.”

Fenris's mouth glistened through its scowl. When Ilsa's voice reached the modest decibel of a low-flying military jet, he squeezed his eyes shut and visibly shuddered in disgust. “I've never seen this movie,” he growled, just loud enough to be heard.

Hawke sighed and muttered “she'll stop eventually,” but the little girl, who instantly fell off her chair and lifted her beet-red face in shock at them, climbed back up and started again at an even greater volume.

“ _Will_ she?” Fenris snapped, and Hawke laughed, eyeing the syrup that dipped from the wooden spoon she used in place of a microphone.

“How're you so good-bad with her?”

Fenris's eyebrows raised. “I don't know what that means, Hawke. Er. You are swaying.”

“'m fairly intoxicated. Yigh. D'you have kid siblings or some'th?”

“No.”

“Mm. D'you like em?”

“ _What?_ ”

Hawke snorted and turned off the faucet, wiping his hands on his jeans as he leaned the small of his back against the damp counter. “D'you like kids?”

That was the thing about Fenris. His attitudes changed like the fucking _wind_ , so it didn't come as a surprise when he heatedly responded with “ _not really_ ” and busied himself by picking up the scant pieces of Merrill's ceramic accident at their feet. The mood was almost as uncomfortable as the water seeping into the fabric of his shirt, but following the subliminal suggestions tumbling loudly through Ilsa's two front teeth, Hawke, in the midst of a drunken wobble, decided to Let It Go.

–

A major side-effect of being small in stature, Hawke mused, was the universal inability to get warm. Both Fenris and Merrill were in their own versions of tattered parka and shivering like petrified rabbits in a lion sanctuary, and Hawke's right arm was growing numb because Merrill insisted on velcroing herself to him while they hiked to the peak of a nearby cliff.

The 2 o'clock sun mixed well with the liquor in his system. His phone said it was thirty-four degrees but the sweat on his neck said it was hot as balls, and by the time they found Isabela and Z in a compromising position against the bark of a bowing maple tree, Hawke had peeled several layers off of his body to allow the wind to cool his skin.

“Yer gonna catch a cold,” Bart scolded between unreasonably masculine gulps of gin.

Hawke rolled his eyes and laughed “yer gonna catch cirrhosis” while he lifted his own beer to his mouth.

Fenris was caught in a one-sided conversation about the natural remedies of lavender with Varric. It made Hawke's eyebrows quirk, but it absolutely didn't prepare him for the rest of his best friend's speech:

“See, as a Gemini, I tend to appreciate the balance of mint and cloves around autumn—”

Hawke frowned, taken aback. “Are you kidding?”

“The fuck are you talking about? You know I'm a Gemini.”

“Nope, I sure didn't. Know why?”

“Because it's stupid?” Merrill asked, giggling. “Well, _I_ think it's charming, especially since Fenris's birthday is coming up soon. Don't you find it nice, Fenris? You're a Libra, aren't you? Or wait, is it Scorpio now?”

Isabela responded with, “he's a cusp, doll,” and all Hawke could say was “oh my God.”

Fenris covered his chin and shrugged. “I-I don't know. How does this relate to the scent of lavender?”

“It's—”

“Don't say it,” Hawke jokingly warned, throwing his hand up to his forehead. “Please, God, don't say it—”

But Bart continued, “it's _nature_ , boy. That's why we're having roasted cauliflower tonight.”

Hawke was in the middle of thinking _what the fuck is happening to the Tethras family_ when Mittens, thank God, stopped dead in his tracks and interrupted them all. He looked up at Hawke through a forlorn gaze and a whine akin to the wail of a starving baby.

“Oh, c'mon. Poor boy. C'mere.” He lifted his dog off the ground and chuckled into his prickling fur.

“What's wrong with him?” Fenris fidgeted before throwing a skeptical look over the edge of the cliff.

Hawke groaned as he tried to steady his footing beneath Mittens' traumatized weight. “He—oh, stop _moving_ —sorry, he hates heights.”

“And snow,” Isabela added helpfully. There wasn't any snow, but Fenris beamed at the dog all the same.

Despite his distance and disturbing reluctance to participate in casual conversation like everybody else in the world, Fenris actually seemed to be enjoying himself. He even stopped shivering about halfway though Hawke's beer, his tan cheeks assuming the plumage of a warm and inebriated house finch and his fingers hidden somewhere along the lining of his jacket pockets. Hawke wanted to tell him stupid things like “c'mere, I am a beacon of warmth” and “stop pulling your hood over your face, I wanna see you”, but every time he opened his mouth Mittens shifted with a huff, resulting in bruises and an assortment of twisted ligaments – and two potentially fatal stumbles into conspiratorially placed mounds of stone.

For the better, he supposed, hoisting his dog over his shoulder again. His elbow hurt like hell but he didn't give a shit because Fenris was already nearing the peak, and somewhere behind him Isabela shrieked something along the lines of “EW NO STOP THERE'S BLOOD!” at the back of his head.

–

They passed a bowl between them while seated on some boulders overlooking the mountainside, making small talk about astrology in which Varric admitted to being totally full of shit (“I don't even know what Gemini is”). It was a blessing, really, because Hawke already had to listen to Isabela's horoscope every morning and he didn't think he could handle having two friends decipher their moon signs every month.

Fenris was dreadfully silent through all of it. He was drinking and he even took two hits when the bowl made it to his hands, but he was otherwise motionless and Hawke once again found himself terrified that he'd dragged him into a situation that he didn't want to be in.

Of course Fenris denied it whenever he asked, but Hawke knew he was lying. Fenris got tired of social interaction quickly and it wasn't normal for him to be in the company of strangers for extended periods of time. Even at Josie's Books, he never worked the registers or the customer service counter. He was mainly in the aisles shelving Christian fiction or showing teenage girls where they could find the manga section, huddled to himself, speaking briefly and politely to those who'd cross his path.

Hawke liked to think that Fenris only opened up to him. It was unlikely, especially since Tally had once made the implication that she knew Fenris better than most, but the thought still made Hawke happy. Fenris was a mystery – a really funny, really fucking gorgeous mystery who lived beneath a hood and had the profound eyes of somebody who understood life better than people three times his age. It was intoxicating, the way his eyes shifted through every shade of green like that, and as he kneaded his beer can Hawke caught the timid smile that slowly formed at the corner of his lips.

One of Bart's friends drove the golf cart up the path and chased them, honking, back down to the cabin where several unfamiliar cars littered the perimeter. After seeing the way Fenris's footing changed at the addition of a dozen random people, Hawke made a point to drag him to the Jeep under the guise of retrieving instruments and blankets from the trunk. Fenris seemed somewhat grateful at first, but he eventually insisted on joining the rest of Bart's company because it “wasn't polite to loiter outside of a party.”

“Oh, pff, it's _Bart's_ house,” Hawke laughed, but Fenris simply shrugged and insisted on going back.

“Okay,” Hawke sighed, worriedly fixing his gaze on the slowing pace of Fenris's steps. “Hey—”

Fenris turned around to look at him, but his face was expressionless, his mouth a pale line.

Hawke shook his head. His chest fluttered at the way Fenris wrung his fingers into his sleeve. “Never mind,” he grumbled, and lugged his guitar back to the porch.

–

Fenris claimed a chair at the corner of Varric's brother's porch and sat there for nearly two hours. It was a good location, obscured by a grill and heated by one of those pagoda fireplaces they usually have in the outdoor section of Home Depot, untainted by the scent of spilled whiskey or the sight of all the bearded strangers that arrived throughout the day. Hawke had been right – Varric's brother had a lot of friends, and not one of them bothered to introduce themselves to anyone but Isabela.

The seat was visible enough to maintain politeness as a member of the social circle yet hidden enough to avoid most forms of unwanted contact – namely from Ilsa, who seemed to take a liking to him and seized every opportunity to tug at his sleeve. Thankfully Merrill noticed how _obnoxious_ she was and promptly invited her to feed the goats. He hadn't seen either of them since.

_Bzzbzzt._

“I thought it was snowing?”

Fenris scoffed at his phone. “No snow.”

_Bzzbzzt._

“Good”

_Bzzbzzt._

“So what should I tell them?”

Sighing, Fenris ended his conversation with Tally by clicking off the display and dropping his phone onto his lap. It was just past 8 PM but the lack of proper lighting made it feel closer to midnight, and as he rolled his head back to catch a glimpse of the star-spangled sky it occurred to him that he didn't want to be there anymore.

Sure, the mountains were nice and he didn't exactly hate the idea of being away from his dorm. Hiking had been pleasant, even funny when he'd discovered the pitch range of Hawke's shrieks during a particularly grim experience with a spider web, but that was _it_. The rest was cold, socially exhausting footwork; walking, sitting, eavesdropping on sickening anecdotes of Hawke's seemingly colorful sex life, glaring in scorn at Hawke's gray knit cap as it permanently migrated to the top of Isabela's head. He couldn't even pull out his sketchbook without first drawing a crowd of curious faces.

And where was Hawke, anyway? Somewhere else, playing social butterfly between sips of various liquors and vacant instrument strums, his hands shivering around necks of guitars and bottles, his laugh echoing off the porch and into the dark barks of trees surrounding. He kept checking up on Fenris, kept hobbling over with his smile stretching ear-to-ear, murmuring “can I sit with you?”, frowning whenever Fenris declined and told him to go find his dog or Merrill or—

_Bzzbzzt._

“Someone's likin' all over you tonight.”

Fenris leaned forward, surprised by the sudden block of the porch light. “ _What_?”

“Hm?” This time, Hawke sat down at Fenris's feet and handed him a plate of various cuts of meat. “Who're you flirting with?”

“I thought this was a cruelty-free home,” Fenris skirted, shifting uncomfortably at the pressure of Hawke's shoulder against his knees.

“Yeah, Bart totally ate a hot dog.” A pause, and Fenris was given a new glass of wine that he accepted far too eagerly. “Sooo, who're you sleeping with?”

“I'm no—” Fenris huffed defensively, shaking his head in self-correction while Hake muttered something about facial cues in text-based relationships, “they are throwing me a surprise party. At work.”

Hawke barked a laughed into his dinner roll. “For _you_? Um, do they not know you?”

“Apparently not,” chuckled Fenris. His heart twisted at the implication that Hawke thought he did. “I assumed that they'd learned from last year's mistake.”

“Idonwannano. Can I bake the cake?”

Fenris shook his head, lifting his wine to his lips. “No. Ar—er, sorry, what do you call her?— _What's Her Face_ is making cupcakes.”

“Gross,” Hawke sneered as he drunkenly sank his teeth into a rib. “Wait, _she's_ who you've been texting all night?”

“No,” Fenris rasped. His voice sounded slow and hollow, and ended in a crack when Hawke decided to lay his chin upon his lap. “I-I've been speaking with Tally.”

After a long silence, Hawke curled his hand around the tip of his boot and pressed his chin even deeper into his thigh.

“Fenris. D'you wanna go home?” he asked carefully, his eyes big and dark, his bottom lip hidden beneath a cautious bite.

Fenris glared down at him. Hawke really was good looking, even with matted hair and barbecue sauce smeared like toddler's chapstick across the better part of his mouth. There was a certain color to his cheekbones that seemed to intensify as he completed his question, but Fenris absently attributed it to the fact that he was wearing a t-shirt in the high autumn chill. “Not r-really,” he lied. He shifted his hips to subtly nudge Hawke off of him, but it worked against his greater hopes and his thighs felt cold in the absence.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, you need'a tell me if you're not sure, Fenris.”

Somebody ran by, socking the gray hat down over Hawke's eyes as they passed. Fenris scowled at their fleeting shadow but Hawke just laughed and wiped his lips clean with his forearm. “We can get you a ride, you know, if you hate it here—”

The accusation in that sentence made Fenris suddenly angry and he set his untouched plate aside. “ _I do not want to leave, Hawke._ ” 

“...O-Okay,” Hawke said quietly. His smiling gaze dropped in pieces to the floor. “Okay. Just—uh, just let me know if it changes.”

–

Hawke anchored himself to Fenris's side for the remainder of their night, and when they moved from the porch to the campsite at the end of Varric's brother's property he insisted that Fenris sit on one of the many blankets he'd brought.

The night picked up significantly after they lit the campfire, mainly because Fenris used several bottles of Cabernet to encapsulate his regret over the deviant response from his sympathetic nervous system. Yes, he wanted to go home, so he lied about it and drank his consequences away until he was cackling and clapping along to Isabela's wasted ballad about the bleeding tide. It was a decision he didn't quite apologize for, because it meant that Hawke was happily leaning against him, breathing jokes into his ear, sharing cigarettes and sips of wine by the flickering firelight while everyone around them quoted lines from a movie he'd never seen.

Hawke and Isabela played songs about winter and Varric toasted Z for every non sequitur statement he made, and Fenris was finally able to sit back and sketch the form of a familiar 6'2-flat figure carrying his dog along the top of a cliff, drunk, unsteady, swatting away Merrill's head as it dipped into his blurring vision to compliment his line-work in the dark.

It was only then, as his finger drunkenly slid across a trail of charcoal debris, that he felt totally at ease, and when the clank of Hawke's guitar echoed near him, when Hawke cast the sketchbook aside to wedge his knee between Fenris's thighs and pushed him back to leave intoxicated nips along the rim of his ear, Fenris laced his fingers through the strands of hair beneath Hawke's hat and moaned quietly at the clear rumble of the voice cooing “you're drawing me, you're _drawing me_...”

“You're really drunk—”

“Yeah?” Hawke's teeth gave way to kisses that trailed down behind his hood, causing Fenris to shake. “Yeah, you are too, aren't you—you can't even get my shoulders right, you're fucking shiverin'—”

Fenris gasped at the feeling of canines dragging across his neck and twisted his bleary head to get Hawke's lips where they needed to be, circling his leg around Hawke's waist to urge him forward while the twinkle of Isabela's mandolin filled the space between them.

It all happened too fast. Hawke's breath left traces along his mouth, whiskey-coated lyrics falling over him in shuddering waves, and Fenris let himself disintegrate beneath the weight of Hawke's hands as they skated down the length of his rib cage.

“Wanna kiss you,” Hawke panted, fingers twining around Fenris's beaten parka like the licks of a fire raging, “lemme—wanna—”

_Bzzzzzzzzzzzt. Bzzzzzzzzzzt. Bzzzzzzzzzt._

Fenris nodded but it didn't matter. A loud vibration, a gasped “ _fuck,_ ” and Hawke leaped off of him and darted into the woods without another word. Fenris went cold again, squeezing his eyes shut to block the glow of Hawke's phone as it vanished behind a tree.

Through the distant spark of a lighter Fenris heard Z say “that was hot,” but it was muffled by cigarettes and the blood beating hard against his ears. He raked his nails down his face, shaking and contorting his face in disgust while he laid on spinning dirt thinking _what was that, what just happened_ , but the question smelled like booze and tobacco and it made him nauseous.

Minutes passed and Hawke didn't come back, so Fenris swung himself up to a sitting position in time to hear the drawling finish to Varric's latest narrative. It was about foxes eating black cats in his neighbor's yard, but Fenris could barely hold his head upright to say anything in response. He swayed to the side and squinted at the incinerated silhouettes of everyone around him, nodding sickly at the “are you okay?”s he received from Merrill, falling forward against his knees, swallowing back the alcohol that threatened the back of his throat.

Hawke was gone. He said he wanted to kiss him, and now he was screaming at somebody miles away.

 _Screaming?_ Fenris rolled his head up to lock his gaze on Varric. “Errrrr. I-is he alright?”

Varric's answer first came as a studious glance over at his friend, who was slowly pacing between the dark shrubs that outlined their makeshift campsite. When Hawke stilled and angrily brought his hand to the knit cap on his head, Varric winced.

“He's talkin' to Leandra,” he explained. “He'll be fine. Just give'm a second. Are _you_ alright, kid? Yer drunk as shit.”

Fenris tilted his head to the side, leaning toward the fire as he hesitantly accepted a s'more from Merrill. He frowned down at it for a moment, letting warm chocolate bleed onto his gloves before cautiously slurring, “his mother?”

“You got it.” The words were punctuated by the distant, threatening echo of “what the _fuck_ is wrong with you?!” and Fenris wound his fingers around his knee.

Varric made it sound like this phone call was a frequent occurrence, but it seemed unlikely, hyperbolic and drastically out of character for the script Fenris was subconsciously writing for all of them. In his head, Leandra was a good mother, and Hawke was a good son from an unbroken home who had real Christmases and said grace before eating Thanksgiving turkey every year. Fenris had met Leandra at the Hanged Man, had listened to her speak highly of her son between songs and sips of her gin, had watched her kiss his cheek with foreign and glowing motherly pride. She'd been very pleasant, and though her eyes differed from Hawke's in that they were the shade of a morning sky, the kindness in them shone like they too were made of gold.

Still, Hawke's silhouette stalked in furious circles around a tree and Fenris braced himself against the chills creeping down his spine at the unexpected thunder in his voice.

Placing Merrill's s'more down onto a napkin in favor of reaching for his wine, he allowed his curiosity to show. He didn't have to say anything. Varric seemed to read his expression just fine.

“Ehhh, he didn't tell you?” Varric threw another hollow glance over his shoulder before continuing, “let's just say she's got a big, fat problem of nasty proportions.”

Isabela dramatically cut in with “for _real_ , though,” but Fenris didn't notice because he was blearily watching Varric chuckle into the mouth of his beer.

“Whad'you mean by 'problem'?”

“A _problem_. Jeez—haha—I forget that there are people in this world who don't already know about that.”

Fenris felt his cheeks redden and took another sip of wine. _What problem?_ “H-he doesn't talk about his family.”

“Seriously? When I met him that was all he talked about.” That stung. “Maybe I should meet him again just to see what it's like...”

“When—hic—when did you meet?”

“Pffffff _uhhh_ ,” Varric's mouth went ludicrously slack while he counted the years as if they were tallied among the treetops. “Fuck if I know. Some time in high school before he had the beard. Maybe the beginning of junior year or—or some shit. Could you get me another one'a these while you're up?”

Merrill squeaked a response as she stumbled away from the fire.

“That's quite a while,” Fenris muttered, upset. His fingertips were sticky from peeling at the label on his wine bottle. Somewhere between the crackling of the fire and a hazy image of sixteen-year-old Hawke without his height or facial hair, he found himself asking “has his mother always—er—had a 'problem'?” while he chewed his bottom lip. His throat burned with alcohol again.

“Naaah—thanks, Daisy—don't get me wrong, Leandra's a great person, she just handled the whole Bethany situation in a really bad way.”

“Aww, I don't blame her—” defended Isabela, to which Varric waved dismissively..

“I don't _either_ , Bel, but you know it doesn't make it any less bad.”

Fenris fidgeted a little as Hawke's back disappeared from sight, feeling winded in his desire to pry further. Whatever it was, everybody around him seemed to know something that he didn't. It wasn't his business. Considering he'd been less than eager to answer harmless questions about his own background, Hawke's omission of personal information was only fair.

In theory. Reality, however, saw Fenris sick and aching to vomit the marshmallow he'd just consumed. He drained the last of his wine and worked hard to straighten his back, still tingling from Hawke's assault, strangely determined to find out as much as he could while he still had alcohol and Varric's loosened lips at his disposal. “Who is Beth—?”

Bart's friends hollered at each other down the trail and stopped his question before it had a chance to take shape, but the fire seemed to wane, the breeze seemed to cease, and Hawke's three closest friends stared at him from the pitying corners of their eyes.

“Oh, kitten...” Isabela breathed softly, tender and sympathetic, breaking the thick silence that had molded around the camp. Fenris was floored. “That's something you need to ask him, not us.”

_Bzzbzzt._

When Hawke finally returned, he dropped down onto the blanket and promptly rested his head against Fenris's upper arm. “Sorry bout that,” he chuckled, reaching for Fenris's wine and frowning at its lack of content. Fenris went numb at the contact, dazed and cold as he stared at the embers collecting along the bottom of the fire pit.

Varric made a gruff sound. “What's it now?”

“Percocet,” Hawke said flatly. He scratched his brow against the curve of Fenris's shoulder, but before the word was even finished, he jerked his head up and restlessly bounced to his feet. “I'm gonna set up the space heater. Or some'th.”

Fenris watched him vanish into the tent with a pack of batteries clutched in his fist, the urge to follow him dissipating at the sound of a cork popping out from the nose of a new bottle of wine.

–

They cleared the campsite by 3 AM.

Because Varric announced that he'd previously urinated on his brother's sofa and Isabela and Z had laid claim to the inexplicably vacant trailer to their left, the options for Fenris's sleeping arrangements were limited to three unfavorable possibilities: Hawke's car, which would be cold – the blanket by the extinguished fire, which would be even colder – or Hawke's four-person tent, which, while warm, would entail him making his bed between Merrill and the one person who'd refused to look at him since he rejoined the campsite with a strained smile tapered to his lips.

Fenris burrowed into his borrowed sleeping bag and tried to dodge the limbs flailing like branches off of Merrill's sleeping frame. As it turned out, Hawke wanted nothing to do with him and chose to sleep with Mittens at the horizon of Fenris's feet, muttering a quick “g'night” before stuffing his head under an expanse of tan fur.

The night was longer than usual, loud with breaths that belonged to strangers, and Fenris spent most of it trying to orient himself with the nylon arching above his head. He was too drunk to think about how warm Hawke's body had felt on his or how the whole place smelled like smoke, so he sat up, sent anxious glances around the tent, and frantically clicked the the power button on his phone until it died.

Hours must have passed but it was still dark when the figure at the foot of his sleeping bag began to rouse. “Fenris?” Hawke rasped, concerned. “You good?”

Fenris nodded spastically. He could feel the burn of Hawke's gaze through the darkness of the tent, so he pressed his eyes into his knees to avoid it. “Sorry,” it came hoarse, pulling his mouth into a grimace. “Sorry. I can't sleep—sorry.”

There was a moment of shuffling, the sound of a zipper and a quick flick of a lighter before Hawke spoke again. “C'mon,” he whispered, pausing for a second to shine a light on Merrill's sleeping face, “s'go for a walk.”

Draping a blanket over his shoulders, Fenris followed him out into the darkness with no question. They stumbled up the trail they'd taken earlier that day, path illuminated by Hawke's phone and a keychain flashlight until they reached a mound of boulders where Hawke rolled a cigarette with loose tobacco and weed.

“Spliff,” he explained quietly, and with a low chuckle he ducked beneath Fenris's blanket. “S'fucking cold out. You mind?”

Fenris pursed his lips at the new, uninvited proximity to Hawke's body heat. “You wore a t-shirt all day.”

“S'cold _now_ , though,” he laughed. “Fuuuck I'm drunk, still. You good?”

“Yes.”

“No more drunk?”

“I don't know.”

“No panicky attacky?” A sneeze.

“No. Are you getting sick?”

“God I hope so. DuPuis' driving me nuts.” Hawke lit the spliff and took a drag, urging it on to Fenris through a slow, visible exhale that billowed around them. Fenris accepted but allowed it to burn between the frays of his gloves.

“Hawke?” The name dragged out of his throat, slow like the feet he shuffled against Hawke's fleece slippers. He edged closer, guided by the winding of fingers in the blanket and the pressure of Hawke's jaw against his temple. _You said you wanted to kiss me._ “What happened to Bethany?”

He immediately regretted asking, because Hawke's warmth was gone, strong hands dropping from his shoulders to find a flask hidden in a jacket pocket.

“Sorry—” Fenris stumbled, reaching for Hawke's arm and grasping air instead. _No, sorry, come back and kiss me, sorry, stop, I don't care, I really don't—_

“No, s'okay.” Hawke side-eyed his surroundings in caution. When he finally spoke again, he sounded uncertain and small.

“I killed her.”

“Y-you—” Fenris froze, his brain locked on _stop_ , his fingernails twisting into the cotton filter at the bottom of the cigarette. “Wh...? When?”

“Little under two years ago.”

“...How?”

“Driving.”

Blinded, Fenris finally took a drag. “Driving?”

“Yeah. Let's shut up about this,” Hawke laughed, but it sounded heavy, teetering on the edge of the cliff they stood near. “Are you gonna tell me what's wrong with your hands or what?”

“I—”

“No?” Hawke interrupted, his smile turning bitter against his flask. “Okay.”

They shared the spliff in silence that was only broken with a meaningless joke about the weather. At some point Hawke apologized for being drunk enough to make a move on him in front of everyone, but it was lost in the night, disappearing as they slowly led each other back to the tent where Fenris was forced to see the contours of his face in the light of a glowing phone.

In his head, Hawke was a good son who never had a bad day. He ate turkey on Thanksgiving with a family who loved him and lived the life that Fenris could never have. He had nothing to hide, no scars to cover, no reason for anything that would keep him from having a smile or a Christmas.

There were probably girlfriends at those holiday dinners, too, pretty ones that laughed at his jokes and looked like Merrill if Merrill had been taller. Bustier. The kind of girls with flowers in their hair, who looked like Japanese dolls and wore white dresses by the river, who smoked cigarettes beneath the high school bleachers and had Hawke's picture taped to the lining of their mirrors.

Or maybe they were the Isabela types. Musicians, probably. Sharp as nails, up for rock climbing, condoms-on-the-dresser, calling his mother by her first name on their first date. The kind who wrestled with Mittens in the rain. The kind who wrestled with Hawke between his sheets.

“Hey.”

Fenris rubbed his chin and twisted his head to look over at Hawke. His eyes were dark and dancing. Slowly, sure, but dancing all the same.

“I picked her up at like three in the morning.”

Fenris nodded, his chest heaving beneath quickening breaths and his vision growing black. Hawke was a good son with a bad mother. Hawke was a good son who killed his sister. Hawke had a colorful sex life that people talked about. Hawke's favorite Coldstone flavor was cake batter, not chocolate. “Bethany?”

“Hm.” _cough, cough._ “She fucking _reeked_ of booze.”

“H-how old was she?”

“Seventeen,” Hawke groaned, coughing again. “Like, I'm talking piss-faced, smeared eyeliner and someone else's pants on. We got into a fight because I saw a jizz stain on her shirt—” Fenris jumped slightly when Hawke's voice cracked into a watery, mordant chuckle, and moved across the sleeping bag until he was inches away from Hawke's stiff shoulders. “—fuck, I never told anyone about that. Ah, _shit_. Fuck. Ha... uh, roads were all ice.”

For some reason, all Fenris could think to say was “did you have your Jeep at the time?” and it made his lungs feel like paper.

“Jeep was gettin' a new transmission— had her car. Ha. Jesus, that fucking _jizz stain_. Ha, uh. Long story short, the guy in front of us fishtailed real bad and hit the median, I slammed the brakes to not... hit _him_.”

“Did you?”

“Hm?”

“Did you hit the person i—”

Hawke's voice bled over his. “The person in front... no. No, we spun out into a tree.”

A long pause. Fenris could almost hear the smile that quietly settled on Hawke's mouth.

“So that's it,” Hawke laughed, feigning lightness. Fenris had the fleeting thought that his smile deserved the world. “What else? Hmm. I stole money from my mom's purse for ice cream when I was like, seven. Favorite color's red. I beat off when I shower in'th mornin'.”

“Er. Good to know.”

“Yeah?” Hawke rolled over at the same time that Mittens did, propping his head up on his hand. “Can I know something now?”

Fenris rubbed his eyes. “Like what?”

“I'uno. Whatever you want.”

And there it was, heavy as the nails suddenly dragging paths through Fenris's hair – the cracks in his wall, the flood that broke the dam. Hawke watched him with his eyes half-lidded and his index finger curling at the base of Fenris's neck, burning rings into his skin in their slight movements as Fenris came to the wine-colored realization that he'd finally fallen in love with Garrett Hawke.

 _Garrett Malcolm,_ Fenris winced at the correction. Whose sister died at seventeen, whose mother is a drug addict.

“Fenris.”

Fenris couldn't speak. He just shook his head and muttered another apology, laying his head down into the frozen nest of his own arms while the taste of weed worked against the panic spawning from Hawke's fingertips. _Who has a brother in the military, who doesn't tell serious stories without laughing after them._

“Aww. You passin' out?”

Another shake of his head, but this time it hurt because Hawke's hand fell away, and he let himself fall asleep to the dots he connected between the sound of a cracking windshield and Hawke's hesitance to drive in the dark.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nonbinary pronouns are used for Z. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all of your comments - I'm so bad at responding to them but I promise I'll try. Also the rating changed.
> 
> Chapter awaiting a serious, serious edit

Somewhere among the pages of Hawke's mostly-empty high school calculus notebook, between passed notes and the occasional scribbled dick, was a Venn diagram listing the pros and cons of spending a night out in the woods.

The pros consisted mainly of getting laid. Making out, groping, flirting by the light of a dimming campfire—those were underlined with the shitty confidence of a tall, attractive teenager who managed to swindle his way into everybody's immediate line of thought, and while it'd been written as a joke to Varric, it proved to be prophetic on two separate occasions during his college career.

Beneath sex was “playing the guitar at an alarming volume” (also prophetic), “STARS!, embracing Anglo Saxon heritage, everyone confuses weed for a skunk” and “marshmallows galore.”

Because Hawke couldn't think of anything worse than “fucking bullshit spiders in the dead of night”, Varric had spent an entire lesson on Integrals helping him out with the cons.

The two of them failed that exam. They never learned how to program their graphing calculators. They even exited the course halfway through senior year, soiling any prospects of a fruitful future in pediatrics or astrophysics – but that cons section remained pristine, bright blue inj in the back of Hawke's high school calculus notebook, stretching like frost over his tent in the light of the dawning mountain sun.

 _Why the actual fuck_ , he thought, eyelids barely cracking to acknowledge the pain blustering through his skull, _was this ever a good idea?_

Varric's list of cons came from a lifetime of experience. He'd lived in cabins for the majority of his youth and knew what he was talking about when he said that pissing in the snow wasn't half as fun as the general public thought.

“Waking up disgusting” was accurate. “The weather is never good before 8 AM”. “Weird wildlife”. “Regrettable everything”, indeed.

Hawke loved camping. He really did. Drinking too—enough for it to pose a temperate problem to his motivational well being—but the combination seriously didn't do him any good because he was lying in a pool of cold sweat and loose twigs, fighting one of the biggest hangovers of his life while situated inches away from Fenris's hair.

With a shock of horror, Hawke remembered how much of a drunken shitbag he'd been all night and slowly shifted onto his stomach. _I have a crippling inability to look before I leap_ he thought, suppressing a groan as Merrill's foot jabbed into his abdomen, _—in every situation ever, which has resulted in the following fuck-ups:_

 _The tattoo I got at that house party when I was seventeen_...

He laid in his sleeping bag for what felt like an eternity, his nose stuffy ( _AND RUNNING!_ ), his vision blurring together in a way that made him question the honest level of his sobriety, and his bladder threatening to overshadow the mild regret currently working its way through his stomach.

Merrill's foot dug deeper. _The glorious infection that riddled the tattoo I got at that house party when I was seventeen..._

Mittens lifted his snout to tiredly plant a kiss on Hawke's nose.

“Morning, buddy,” Hawke whispered, smiling and cringing against his dog's gross tongue. _The Strip Club Incident..._

Gathering the energy to sit the fuck up, he checked his phone, threw on his slippers, and carefully stepped over Merrill's roadkill body to lead Mittens out of the tent. Jealousy nipped at his exposed neck as he watched his dog piss on every tree.

_Pot brownies at the Psych department fundraiser last semester. Stopping a nosebleed with a scented tampon. Sleeping with that one kid who liked to drink tequila out of plastic skulls._

After Mittens finished his business, they jogged across Bart's property because someone had obviously stolen the golf cart from their campsite in the middle of the night. By the time they reached the kitchen Hawke was doing jumping jacks to keep his bladder from exploding all over Bart's newly polished floorboards.

_Running across Lake La Salle when it froze three years ago. AP Chemistry. Using Isabela's old razor to shave my—_

“Are you _kidding me_?”

Of course the only bathroom in Bart's cabin was occupied, so Hawke, following the lead of the equally depraved, Scandinavian-looking man in front of him, went out back to piss forlornly into a rosebush. _Fire-roasting peppers with actual fire. Breaking the safety off my new lighter. Coddling Fenris._

 _Fuck_ , he cringed, remorsefully toeing the grass at his feet. _Ah, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck._ He zipped up and muttered apologies that fell in scowls to the rocks below, kicking them slightly as he walked back inside.

He returned to Isabela dripping all over the kitchen appliances, her hair done up in a wet bun and her mouth tilted toward the coffee machine that clearly refused to cooperate. She looked frustrated and entirely too naked for the gloomy, mostly-cloudy weather rolling across the window so Hawke took the liberty of shutting the curtains.

“Oh, fuck _off_ ,” she bit, one hand angrily flicking switches while the other held a graying towel around her body.

Hawke frowned. “Was it that bad?”

“Hm? God _damn it_ , this stupid fucking—”

“It might be dead, Bel. Is Bart up yet?”

Isabela shrugged, annoyed. “Varric is,” she offered and dropped her forehead against the coffee machine. “Like, all I want is a cup of coffee. _That's it_. That's all I want.”

Dragging his palm over Isabela's shoulders in a soothing motion of comfort, Hawke leaned over the counter to give the coffee maker a try of his own.

It didn't work at all.

“Well, shit—”

“'Well shit' what?”

Varric, Lord and Savior of everything all the time, marched up and confidently slapped Hawke's fingers out of his way.

“Okay, so this isn't the on button--” he teased, emphasizing his sentence with a point to the flickering digital clock on the face of the machine, “it's the timed brew. Did you put the grounds in?”

Noting Hawke and Isabela's blank-ass faces, Varric groaned and immediately fished out a bag of Gevalia French Roast from one of the oak cabinets next to the stove. After being loaded with a filter, the coffee maker whizzed back to life. 

“Wow. It's already on, you guys.”

Hawke exchanged his frown with Isabela, who dropped her head back down to the machine with a harrowing sob. “Thaaaaa-haaaank you...”

“Aw, Bel,” Hawke said gently, wiping his damp hand on his jeans. “Was Z a horrible mistake?”

“ _No!_ They were really, really, truly great, but like, I can't do the broken English,” she shook her head frantically, comically widening her eyes until Hawke burst into laughter. “I can't. I can't do it, Hawke.”

“That's a little mean,” Varric chortled. “Haven't you already been with foreign people?”

“No, but you don't understand. They—”

As if on cue, the bathroom door swung open and Z emerged into the kitchen through a billowing waft of steam, stretching their arms above their head and loudly inhaling the scent of brewing coffee. The motion caused their towel to dip suggestively below the V of their groin.

Hawke had just started to say hello when Z dramatically leaned across the counter to spread the curtains open again, revealing far too much ass to everybody standing in the kitchen. In the corner of his eye, Hawke caught the pantomimed gag that Varric dore ted to the floor.

“Ahhh, ze sky!” Z sighed dreamily, “Ze sky is _prrregnant_ weeth ze sweet promeese of snow!”

“Ohmygod—”

The use of the word “pregnant” to describe anything other than actual pregnancy was the only thing ever capable of making Isabela squirm, and the chill in Hawke's mouth made him realize that he too had his teeth exposed in an exaggerated grimace. Slowly tilting his head down to Isabela's ear, he muttered “I _totally_ get it” while he dug his phone out of his pocket, keeping his eyes as far away from Z's salsa-ing hips as possible.

Merrill had sent a text asking if someone could drive the golf cart over to pick her and Fenris up from the tent because it was “really cold out and we are freezing very much”, so when the coffee was finished, Varric and Mittens disappeared to do just that. Hawke took that time to brush his teeth twice.

The kitchen grew quiet while Isabela brewed another pot of coffee for good measure, and as Bart finally arrived for his morning cup of Jim Beam with Ilsa slung over his shoulder like a jacket, he darted his beady eyes between the collective nakedness of Isabela and Z and grumbled,

“Yer gonna catch a cold. All'a ya.” Hawke sneezed in proof of his point.

It didn't take long for the golf cart to hum its way back up to the cabin and Hawke's breath hitched in his throat as he caught the snowy glimmer of Fenris's hair in the distance. Through the window he watched him lithely bounce on the balls of his feet, shivering and reluctantly nodding to whatever Varric said, and when he saw a flash of green Hawke quickly busied himself by making mugs for the new arrivals. He adjusted his gray cap several times before he took a deep, awkward breath and padded out the door.

Snow littered the peaks ahead of him and he wondered, distantly, if Fenris actually liked the cold because he showed no signs of going inside. Tightening his fingers around all three mugs, Hawke tiptoed his way down the porch steps to greet the both of them with warm smiles and even warmer coffee.

“That is very sweet, Hawke,” Merrill croaked, her wide eyes reduced to a pair of bloodshot slits. She spilled her coffee as she took her cup between the sleeves of her parka. “Oh, poop. Do you suppose Bart believes in recycled paper towels, too?”

Varric perked up. “Yeah, actually. They're in the—never mind, I'll just show ya.”

Watching Merrill and Varric hurry back to the house, Hawke nervously bit his lip. "So," he started, blindly handing Fenris the remaining coffee. “How'd you sleep?”

Fenris carefully accepted and took a sip. “Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Just fine.”

Hawke sighed, finally bringing himself to look at him up close. Fenris's hood was down and his hair was knotted in strange angles across his face. His cheeks were pink. His hands were shaking. His mouth was hidden behind the rim of his mug, but his eyes were bright and searching Hawke's face with an expression that he couldn't read.

The butterflies started their rounds again, and it was a long moment before Hawke tilted his head down and gathered to the courage to sigh, “Look, Fenris. I—uh—well, I—”

“ _Ohmygod_ ,” interrupted Isabela, who suddenly appeared next to them dressed in white leggings and her oversized knit sweater. “He's probably apologizing for being a slut when he's drunk.”

Fenris's eyebrows shot up across his forehead. “Pardon?”

 _...Fuck._ “Oh God,” Hawke groaned, squeezing the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Please, Isabela.”

“Kitten, he's sorry for _slutting all over you_ yesterday. And if he's not, he really should be."

“Isabela.”

But Fenris simply shrugged and studied Hawke through an opening in his messy hair. “I don't think he—” a fidget before his eyes dropped to the ground, “er— _slutted_ on me.”

“Really? Hahaha! Oh, sweetheart, you really _are_ a precious little thing.”

Isabela leaned closer until Hawke could feel her forehead against his shoulder. She curled her fingers around his wrist, turned him toward her and lightly purred, “hey, can we borrow the tent?”

Hawke twisted his hand in hers. “Of course," he replied, laughing a little at the pressure of nails lightly digging into his skin. "'We?'”

“Z wants to see snow.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm. So we're gonna go see snow.”

“You need the tent to see snow?”

When Isabela nuzzled her face into his chest, Hawke snapped his gaze up to Fenris, who immediately turned around to inspect the crack at the bottom of his phone case.

“Mmhm. We won't be back til tomorrow,” she said. She already smelled like booze and was clinging a little too hard for the pain chipping at his skull. “Maybe Monday.”

Hawke brought his coffee up to his lips and cast another glance to the mess of white hair beside him. Fenris was still distracting himself, but this time he was anxiously watching Mittens fetch a ball behind a tree.

“I'll pack it up for you in a bit,” Hawke muttered, distancing his arm from Isabela to ultimately prevent Fenris from getting the wrong idea. He had a creeping suspicion that it didn't work at all.

“Thanks, babe.”

“Wait, hey, is Z's car good on ice?”

“Who cares?”

Hawke's chest twisted in terrible knots at the ease of her response. “Bel—”

He could feel Fenris's eyes on him then, green sinking deep into the side of his face, but they fell away as Isabela clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Oh _shit_ , I'm so sorry! Okay. Oh wow, I'm sorry. I promise I'll make sure. Give me a hug. Fuck.”

She kissed his cheek and ran back to the house, throwing one last swearing apology over her shoulder before vanishing through the door. Hawke turned back to Fenris and smiled at him as he drank the last of his coffee, ready to explain the _slutting_ or the touchy-feely or the complete contents of his camping supplies before Fenris carefully formed his first question:

“Were you able to drive after Bethany?”

 _God damn it._ Hawke continued to smile despite the cringe that wanted to monopolize his face. “Yeah, I mean, it took a while.”

“How long?” Fenris shook his head and slid his gloved hand over his chin. “Sorry, if you don't mind my asking—”

“I don't. Like six months before I got in the Jeep. Maybe a year until other cars.”

“And at night? Er. Sorry.”

Hawke's insides softened. “You're fine, Fenris,” he said gently, resisting the urge to tear Fenris's fingers away from his mouth. “I started driving at night this past June. Still can't do ice.”

Fenris nodded, shifting his weight between his legs. “Will you be alright tonight?”

After a moment, Hawke shrugged.

“Yeah.” _Come here-- you're perfect-- your eyes look yellow when you do that._ “Yeah, we'll be fine.”

–

To Hawke's immense relief, Z drove a brand new Subaru Forester with snow tires and an emergency after-market hand brake, and they didn't hesitate to rehash their recent experience of test driving Honda Elements through the Swiss Alps during the time it took Hawke to disassemble the tent. By the time he cleared the campsite, Hawke's hangover had simmered to a dull hybrid of hunger and general achiness – both of which were immediately cured with a shot of whiskey and a bowl of Bart's famous corned beef hash.

Merrill and Isabela participated in a screwdriver-drinking contest with Varric, who belatedly realized that he was the designated driver and cut himself off for the rest of the afternoon. Even Hawke held his hand up to any additional offerings of booze, choosing to stick close to water and a bottle of pomegranate lemonade iced tea, and Fenris seemed so extraordinarily out of it that Hawke was sure he'd vomit if he had so much as a whiff of beer.

They sat around the porch, played card games and talked quietly about the holidays while they passed the last of Varric's weed around the table. Fenris won the first round of poker and decided to quit while he was ahead, which led to him to becoming the sole audience to Ilsa's costumed performance of Do You Want to Build a Snowman, and, despite the vague jealousy he felt over Ilsa's disregard ( _the little shit hasn't even looked at me all day_ ), Hawke found himself loudly applauding every time she took a bow too.

At some point the sun set, and at another Fenris left the table without a word, so Hawke texted him a question mark and scolded himself for being a stupid idiot when Fenris reappeared with his sketchbook clutched tightly in his fists.

“Sorry,” muttered Hawke, leaning back as Fenris reclaimed the seat beside him.

“For?”

“Never mind. Can I watch?”

Hawke interpreted his shrug as _sure, Garrett! I love your company! We're such friends!_ and made himself comfy around one of Isabela's burning American Spirits, pausing to pick up the pencils that rolled off the table after Fenris set them down.

There was a grumbled “thank you”, but it came at the exact moment that Fenris opened his sketchbook to a short series of rough portraits. A few of them looked like his coworkers – quick sketches of Tally glowering by her shelving cart, an elderly man reading a newspaper in the cafe, What's Her Face giving a thumbs up behind her register with the words “you're the worst” written in a banner above her head – but the others were more familiar, more detailed, more... _unsure_.

Taller. Boyish. Laughing, in front of mountains and lecture halls, holding a out a leash, flicking a cigarette over the ledge of DuPuis' office window. 

Heart lurching with every swift movement, Hawke watched Fenris's fingers drag an eraser over the curve of his own bottom lip, watched as his scruff was slowly filled in, watched the shades of gray shadow his outline until it was smiling just like him.

–

There was something remarkably unsettling about being watched. Fenris didn't know if he liked it.

He spent most of his life drawing people in a passive-aggressive adjudication of their character. Once, in high school, he sketched a picture of his least favorite classmate and accidentally ignited a rumor about his “feelings for her” because the captain of the cheerleading squad couldn't keep her eyes to herself. What she'd failed to see was the “shut up, please” written in Baroque cursive beneath her torso.

People had the annoying tendency to compliment and criticize things that didn't relate to them. It took entire school years before Fenris was able to doodle without being bombarded by annoying croons of “aww, that's so good!” or “your hair shading looks wrong”, and when he got to college, he had to start the acclimation process all over again by hastily shutting his book and scowling at anybody who asked why he wasn't an art major.

But Hawke was quiet, expressionless, and close enough to touch without having to try. His arm was tkoo warm against his shoulder and the proximity made it extremely difficult to concentrate, but just as Fenris was about to close the book, Hawke leaned away to put out his cigarette.

“Fenris?” His name sounded faint on Hawke's tongue. “D'you give your stuff away?”

_What?_

Hawke shook his head and laughed. He still had cards in his hand as he tapped the edge of the page Fenris was working on. “Hahaha. Your drawings. Not your stuff.”

“Er. I haven't before.”

“Okay.”

Pausing to scratch at a bump in the paper, Fenris asked, “why?”

“Don't worry about it,” he grinned. “You thirsty?”

They sat outside for a while longer, during which Isabela disappeared and Ilsa went to sleep under her father's strict orders. Fenris didn't know how he felt about Bart. Ilsa was alright; her verbal skills were advanced for her age and she always had a smile on her cheeks, but her father, though he clearly loved her, seemed to be one of the biggest alcoholics Fenris had ever met.

Fenris shrugged. Perhaps Bart simply drank on the weekends and practiced cold, hard abstinence during the work week, or whenever Ilsa's mother came home.

_Does she even have a mother?_

Scowling, Fenris decided that it wasn't any of his business and shut his sketchbook with a forward _snap_. The table had started another round of poker, and despite holding mild interest in the three-of-a-kind visible among Hawke's hand, Fenris realized that he was growing tired and drew his knees up to form a pillow for his head.

–

“WE GOIN' OR NAH?!”

Light from the porch shot like shrapnel across Fenris's vision, causing his eyes to shut tightly on their own accord. 

“Hey, we're leaving soon,” Hawke whispered, looking up in a nod to Varric. There was a soft scratch of fingernails between his shoulder blades. “Wanna go to the car?”

Belatedly recognizing the question, Fenris nodded and blearily rubbed his eyes.. He'd fallen asleep but he only knew it by the throb in his spinning head and the cramp in his knees as they slid from beneath his chin.

The temperature had dropped significantly. Shaking, he folded his arms over his chest and got up to his feet, wobbling a little despite the hand Hawke cautiously placed at the base of his neck. As he passed he faintly thanked Bart for having him over, gave a silent “good night” to Ilsa's window, and closely followed Hawke's warmth down to the Jeep at the edge of the property.

Mittens was the first to climb through the open door, making Hawke laugh a little as he leaned inside to gather some trash from between the seats.

“Everything good?” Hawke asked lowly. He stood up with five empty Starbucks cups balanced in his fists, gazing down at Fenris through a painfully obvious glimmer of adoration. Fenris's heart jumped to his throat. 

“Y-yeah—”

“You sure?”

Fenris nodded, subconsciously tilting toward Hawke's chest as he tried to keep his eyes focused. When his head fell against Hawke's shoulder, he winced into his body heat and muttered a strained “m'sorry.”

But Hawke shook his head and pressed his lips to tip of his ear.

Fenris leaned into it, mewling slightly when Hawke's scruff scratched across his eyelids, whimpering when Hawke's arm tightened around his waist and brought him flush against him. _Just the warmth_ , Fenris thought, dragging his hands down Hawke's chest and pushing him back into the exterior of his car. _That's all—he's just warm—_

Hawke kissed his temple, then his forehead, before he somehow slipped out from beneath Fenris's weight. Moving aside, he motioned to the backseat where Mittens was already curled up into a giant ball at the other end.

“Lie down.”

Fenris wearily collapsed onto the seat and covered his eyes with his sleeve, nodding distantly at Hawke when he muttered, “we'll be outta here soon, alright?” and shut the door.

... _SLAM._

Fenris jolted awake as the passenger seat filled with Merrill's petite silhouette, all black hair and knobby limbs turning around to say that it was almost his 21st birthday and that she sincerely hoped he had a good time.

“Wh—?” Fenris groaned.

“Oh! I'm so sorry! Were you sleeping, Fenris?”

“Er. I-I think so.”

“You were only here for ten minutes! I didn't think you could fall asleep so fast!”

Fenris cringed at her shrill. “I clearly can.”

Soon the door behind Fenris's head trickled open to the sound of Hawke's voice sighing _“psst, scooch”_ , and Fenris managed to hold himself up long enough to let Hawke slide in before he tumbled back down to comfort.

Hawke smelled like his car and his house, some musky, vaguely earthy scent that reminded Fenris of the mist that happens at the tail end of a humid rainstorm. Dried tobacco and firewood, a mint, Mittens' napping pillow, apples, all of them slipped through the warm flannel folds of Hawke's shirt and into Fenris's skin, weaving _Garrett_ through his hazy thoughts until he was briefly nudged away.

“One sec,” Hawke breathed, leaning up to remove his phone and wallet from his back pockets while the Jeep roared to life. Fenris tiredly watched him slide down the seat, longing stretching in the seconds between movements, a chill settling deep in his bones as the Jeep sped away from Bart's cabin.

“Alright.”

The word barely left Hawke's lips before Fenris fell back into his branches, nestling beneath the arm that tumbled down around his shoulders. It felt natural to bury his face deep into the crook of Hawke's neck. It felt natural to count the soft thumping of his pulse, to slide his hand across his abdomen and feel him lightly chuckle, to lift his head just enough to brush his lips against the space below Hawke's ear and catch his scent between his teeth.

Hawke was a composition of heat, boneless and solid at the same time, effortlessly sinking into the upholstery of the backseat while his fingers played across Fenris's ribs like a fret board, and somewhere in the middle of it was the hum of Varric's voice, the muffled drum of blood flowing through his head, the distant ghosting of lips across his brow—

With a shiver, Fenris realized that the hand at his waist had started to knead, slowly urging him closer, heavy and hesitant against his hoodie. The taste of Hawke's skin lingered beneath his bottom lip and raised with goosebumps every time he exhaled, so Fenris let himself breathe deeper before he sank his teeth into his neck and drew a hiss that ended with fingers tangling through his hair.

“Hey—”

It sounded worlds away but Fenris felt its stutter against his mouth, a vibration just above that of accelerating traffic in the approaching highway. He pulled back far enough to apologize but Hawke's fingers were already straying down to his jaw, tilting his chin up with soft force, and Fenris caught the shine in his closing eyes before sparks darted through the window and out into the passing trees.

Hawke was a gentle kisser, carefully breaking holes through his walls with stuttering movements that left Fenris shaking and clawing into the bend of his collar. He'd never felt his pulse beat so fast. He'd never felt anything like the lightning that cracked through his chest at the way Hawke stole his breath with every soothing drift of his tongue. 

He was gasping when Hawke pulled away to lean his forehead against his in a quiet, nervous-sounding chuckle that echoed sharply through the car. It sliced through the hammer of his heart in his ears, shredded a path through his chest, and before he knew it he was guiding Hawke back down to tear it from his lips.

This time was deeper, more demanding, and Fenris fought to keep breathing, thrusting his tongue against Hawke's through semi-audible gasps while he dissolved into the warmth of his mouth. He couldn't stop touching, couldn't find a good place to grip, his hand fluttering over collarbones and belt loops, memorizing the way Hawke's hips twitched beneath his touch.

“ _Fuck—_ ” Hawke panted quietly, mouth trailing down his throat as he pressed Fenris back into the seat. No word had ever made Fenris see black. “I—Y-you—”

Fenris took him in again, opened up for him, chest twisting every time Hawke's tongue brushed on his, nails straying down his strong chest and landing at the buckle of his brown leather belt. He could feel Hawke throbbing through the denim beneath his fingers and paused, dizzied by the overwhelming ferocity of his need.

It was only when Hawke expertly cupped the back of his neck that Fenris allowed his fingers to slide across his jeans and into the dip of his pocket. Hissing, Fenris tightened his grip, fingers finding the tip of Hawke's cock through the thin fabric, rubbing slow circles against his slit until Hawke's mouth froze in a silent moan around his tongue.

Everything fell away and Fenris's barely noticed his own hardness as he stroked Hawke through his jeans – he needed him, wanted to feel him hard and hot in his palm, wanted to know how he fucked because his tongue teased him _blind_...

But then Hawke's hand wrapped around his glove and halted his movements, lifting Fenris's fingers off his pants and placing them against the scruff on his cheek.

Fenris's heart dropped a notch but Hawke responded by sweeping his hair out of his eyes and kissing him again.

Fenris allowed himself to nuzzle back into the crook of Hawke's neck, idly brushing his lips against his pulse and drinking the slight shivers that wracked his strong shoulders at the contact. He loved the way he breathed, the way his chest rumbled as he hoarsely told Varric “yeah, exit 34 doesn't have a toll,” the way he dropped kisses to the top of his head in the dark.

He traced his thumb along his dark eyebrow, down his cheekbone, his bottom lip, and Hawke was on him again, his tongue melting him with slow thrusts, one hand sliding up Fenris's waist to rest on his shoulder, his other curling into the hood at the back of his neck.

They made out until they reached the city limits where Hawke spent long moments trying to pull himself away. Fenris shook every time he failed, caught between smiling and moaning whenever Hawke tilted his head back down to once again trap his tongue between his lips.

Fenris was the one who finally broke apart as the Jeep slowed to a stop in front of his dorm. He pressed his forehead against Hawke's cheek, focusing on the hand rubbing hard against his back and the raspy way Hawke said “happy birthday” in an attempt to steady his breath.

It was 1:12 AM. Merrill was sleeping and Varric looked like he wanted nothing more than to sleep too, and Hawke followed Fenris to the door with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans. _The left one is wet,_ Fenris thought hungrily, eyeing the purple hues that blossomed across Hawke's lips. _I want you..._

The corners of Hawke's mouth were quirked in a knowing smile and for a moment Fenris actually thought he could read his mind.

–

_Bzzbzzt._

Fenris snatched his phone off the desk and threw himself down onto his bed, hot with relief at the sight of Hawke's name on his screen. He'd waited almost half an hour.

“Still good?”

“Yes” he typed, wiping his face with his sleeve. He pulled his boots off and flung them to the floor.

_Bzzbzzzt._

“Can I call?”

Fenris didn't bother responding because his phone rang almost instantly, and when he automatically picked it up he heard the chuckle in Hawke's voice as he said,

“Oh god, we totally broke my TA contract.”

Smiling, Fenris turned onto his stomach. “Did we?”

“Yep. 'No faculty member should beco—'”

“Are you really considered faculty?”

“You know, I don't know? The school pays me so probably.”

“You are a student, Hawke.”

“Yes, _Fenris_ , a student who also happens to teach—”

“Teach assist.”

“Hm?”

Giddiness took over and Fenris found himself burying his face into his pillow. “Teach _assist_ ,” he repeated, voice muffled and wavering in his lightheadedness. He could hear the smile widen on the other end of the line.

“Okay, haha, and you sell _books_. Either way I signed something that specifically bans happiness from my life.”

Something about those words made Fenris's stomach crawl and he hated how obvious it was in the way he scathingly responded, “So what are y—”

“Shh,” Hawke cut him off. He sounded suddenly rough. “I've never been that hard in my life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS: My best friend sent me this picture of some guy who looks remarkably like Hawke. Enjoy, and let me know if it's you so I can remove the link and plan our wedding.  
> http://41.media.tumblr.com/f0f6667363c55439e2d11eb3b36275c6/tumblr_n3nkv69sgh1smtazbo1_500.jpg


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and responding. You're the best.

The following days granted Fenris with enough anxiety to legally purchase half a shelf of discount wine.

Work had thrown him a “surprise” party. It wasn't much, but the not-very-new girl baked him cupcakes and he got unlimited beverages at the store's cafe that he spiked with fancy amaretto in the break room. He even agreed to wear a cone hat and impatiently posed for a couple of photographs that made it to the Josie's Books Facebook page by the end of his shift.

Hawke, wrapped in a flannel blanket with his eyes as red as a setting sun, had made a very brief appearance to deliver two presents and a quiet “happy birthday” before collapsing in a fit of coughs across the checkout counter. Tally had pressed her hand to his forehead then took a break to drive him home, but not before she sanitized Fenris's gifts with Germ X and declared that Hawke had no business infecting the entire store with his “stupid fever ass”.

Despite hiding in a panic for the first three minutes of Hawke's presence, Fenris had been excited to see him. He looked painfully ill, hunched over and slightly delirious as he slung an arm around Fenris's shoulders and placed an inconspicuous kiss to his forehead, but the fact that he bothered to visit at all sent Fenris into a fit of clouded glee. Of course, he was silent save for a mumbled word of gratitude. He couldn't even muster the courage to look Hawke in the eyes, his gaze instead choosing to lock on the faint purple bruises decorating the side of his neck. It was only when Tally commented “oh, nice hickeys, Hawke,” that Fenris realized they were of his own design.

Hawke didn't come to Social Psych the next day nor was he on campus for most of the week, and each moment of absence resulted in Fenris growing inordinately restless. Sleep only came after frantic, scribbled landscapes that found the trashcan before he found his pillow, and there was a churn at the bottom of his stomach that bellowed with every incoming text—

“Howre you” to which Fenris had replied “Just fine.”

“I feel like shit,” _of course you do. You're supposedly ill._

“Is this what happens when you die” – Fenris had laughed at that one – and, finally,

“I wanna see you so bad”, at 3:49 AM on a Wednesday, which prompted Fenris to hurl his phone into the laundry basket because for all he knew Hawke wasn't even sick anymore.

By the time Thursday rolled around Fenris managed to convince himself that Hawke hated everything about him, and in turn decided that he hated Hawke twice as much. It didn't matter how often his phone vibrated or how many times Isabela messaged him on Facebook with detailed accounts of Hawke's inclining physical health. It didn't matter that Merrill walked by holding a bag full of chicken noodle soup or that Professor DuPuis sent a mass email stating Hawke would be orchestrating an additional lesson to make up for the one he missed – Fenris was sure that he was faking it.

That's why, when Fenris finally saw him walking out of the Arts and Sciences building at 10 AM wearing blue gym shorts and a crisp denim jacket, he immediately ducked into the nearest restroom to avoid being seen.

–

After nearly four days of bedridden misery, Hawke did all the laundry at 5AM like the brand new man he was.

“The flu sucks so much aaaaass,” he sang, dumping the last of the fabric softener onto his sheets. He slammed the lid shut and practically skipped back into the living room, where Mittens and Isabela were curled up on the couch binge-watching a cable marathon of Law and Order.

“Hay,” said Isabela. She didn't look away from the screen.

“Hey. Been up all night?”

“Mhm.”

“...Seriously?”

“Mhm.”

Hawke cracked his back. “When's your class?”

“Mhm.”

“Okay,” he laughed. Even Mittens seemed totally uninterested in anything that didn't involve Ice-T beating the shit out of some bald guy against a dated Mercedes, so Hawke tiptoed away to brew a pot of coffee and take the longest shower of his life.

He got a good laugh out of watching DuPuis _fucking fail_ to find a parking spot and spent most of the morning answering floating questionnaires about his health. Every time he turned around he heard a dreamy sigh of “ _Hawke, how're you feeling?_ ” and it was so flattering that he made a mental note to get sick again as soon as possible.

Knowing Fenris was somewhere on campus, Hawke sent him a text asking if he'd be interested in getting lunch and waited three hours before he came to the conclusion that Fenris had forgotten his phone at home. He met up with Varric instead and spent an hour listening to him croon wildly over the girl in his Fiction 2 course that he'd been in love with since junior year, then spent another twenty minutes getting snidely teased for the amount of ass he got just by existing.

“It probably has everything to do with height.”

“You're not _that tall_ , though,” Varric groaned, glancing over his shoulder every time the door opened like he was expecting that girl to walk in for the sole purpose of confessing her undying love to him. His face fell when he realized it was just Merrill, and it fell even further when she bounced right up to their table and stole the chair he'd intentionally left vacant. “Maybe it's the beard? Do you think Bianca's the kind of girl who's got a beard fetish? Should I grow mine out? Oh. Hey, Daisy.”

Hawke chuckled and chewed on his straw. “I feel like you should just grow it out so the world knows you can.”

“If I grow a beard, you have to shave yours again and tell everyone you're Carver.”

“Fuck no. I'd never get laid again.”

“I like you with a clean face very much, Hawke,” Merrill told him sweetly, fingers buried to the knuckle in their plate of nachos. “I think I like your clean face better than your beard-face, sometimes. You have a very nice jaw. I think I have a picture somewhere from last year, when you shaved to trick your mother.”

“Oh God, can you send it to me?”

“Absofruitly. I might have it on Facebook, or maybe my Tumb—”

Varric sighed loudly, once again sending a worried look over to the door. “Ahhh, whatever. I don't think she even comes here anymore.”

Hawke said “I can't believe you still haven't asked for her number” just as Merrill asked “who?” and Varric's head landed loudly against the table.

“Bianca and it ain't that easy,” he grumbled, muffled by the sleeves of his leather jacket. “Where's the brooding kid?”

Shrugging, Hawke glanced down at his phone. His heart leaped when he saw he had a new message but it turned out to be from Anders, not Fenris. “In class,” he lied. Fenris should've been out of class at least thirty minutes ago – Varric obviously noticed the strain in his voice because he lifted his head and asked,

“How's that goin'?”

“Haven't seen him. Sick stuff.”

“Ah. At least you have his number.”

“This is so sweet! I wish I had somebody I liked. Nobody's interesting and single at the same time.”

Hawke laughed as Merrill wiped her hands all over his napkin. “I'll shave my beard for you, Merrill. You can like me until it grows back.”

She giggled fiercely and threw him a thumbs-up, babbling something along the lines of “that'll be just fine,” and “when is your brother visiting again,” and “I kind of like being without a person because I can work on things without a care in the whole world.” Even Varric found it adorable.

Fenris didn't respond at all that night. Hawke sent him another text of “Hi” and he was _so sure_ he saw it because he was talking to Isabela on Facebook and their conversation paused like, ten seconds after he hit send.

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” he asked, mildly bothered by the amount of clacking in the living room.

“Stuff,” dismissed Isabela, “he took a class I'm in.”

“Yeah? What class?”

“Aww, don't be jealous, kitten. I messaged him first.”

“Who's jealous?” Hawke laughed.

Isabela sat up, aerating her glass of wine a little while she adjusted her laptop. “You. He doesn't like girls anyway.”

“Ehhh. He might.”

“Oh, I asked,” she quipped, to Hawke's immense discomfort, “he seriously doesn't think any girls are hot.”

“ _He answered that?_ ”

“Mhm. I caught him while he was drunk to see if he got the gifts.”

Hawke gaped down at her. _And somehow his sexual preference just came up._ If she was anybody else, he would've been significantly more surprised.

Instead of asking her whether Fenris hated him again (even though he really, really wanted to), Hawke dropped down onto the couch with his guitar and tried to distract himself by changing his bottom strings. His phone chirped at some point—Anders, of course, not Fenris—and he made plans to make an appearance at some Halloween party at the med dorms that weekend. Of course he immediately opened a new message after he got the time, typing out “Lets go to As thing saturday”, but just as he was about to send it to Fenris, he sighed thickly and sent it to Varric and Merrill instead.

“Hey,” asked Hawke, casting his phone to the floor. He paused for a second to cough and it made him feel heavier than he'd felt in a long time. “Did he open the gifts?”

“Iuno. I'd ask him but he suddenly signed off like, twenty minutes ago. He's kind of a dick.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A) Thank you for everything, B) Happy holidays, C) HOLY SHIT, I bow to anybody who has ever successfully written smut because that shit is hard as fuck.
> 
> Awaiting edit like everything else. Really really really rough draft that could be missing entire parts of paragraphs, woops.

_Twenty-one years of being alive._

Fenris took a swig from his wine bottle before he dropped it down onto his desk, his hand shaking slightly around the open envelope in his palm. _Twenty-one, and this has never changed. Typical._

Twice a year, regardless of location, Fenris's mailbox presented him with a letter from somebody who claimed to be his biological older sister. These letters typically contained a card, rosary beads, maybe a twenty dollar bill that would later make its way into a homeless lady's bucket for the holiday season. One time, when Fenris was in the midst of a ruthless transition between homes #2 and #3, he received an invitation to meet her at a local restaurant on a night in which she expected to be in town. He'd biked half an hour through the rain even though he'd never responded to a single one of her notes. When he'd gotten to the restaurant, he saw a white car with out-of-state plates and decided to turn around, never looking over his shoulder to see whether her eyes were the same as his.

A siren in his chest told him to stop thinking too much about it, so he shook the vague memory out of his head and collapsed with a sigh onto the corner of his bed. He rubbed hard at his eyes; the seniors downstairs were having a party, making the floor vibrate dully beneath his feet.

Eventually Fenris reached below his bed and pulled up the two presents he'd been avoiding for almost a week. They were both wrapped in shiny red paper, adorned with handmade bows fashioned from the doilies they used to display pastries at the Josie's Books cafe. They had “Fenris” written in handwriting that looked like Hawke's on a bad day, though one of them said “vicariously from Bel” and was in the shape of a baseball.

He unwrapped the ball first. It was pale pink, glittery, and childishly decorated with star reliefs, emitting a headache-inducing waft of lavender into the otherwise odorless air of his dorm room. _I do not have a bathtub_ , he thought, stifling a sneeze as he rolled the bomb back down onto his desk. It left a trail of glitter across the polished wood and Fenris, slowly peeling the corner of the remaining present, idly hoped that Hawke's gift wasn't nearly as... ostentatious.

It wasn't. It was a phone case, a really nice one, and there was a note scribbled on the inside of the wrapping paper that said “you can drop this one. Try it!” that made Fenris chuckle in spite of himself.

He scratched at it for a moment before snapping it onto his phone, and with a heavy sigh he glanced at the time—11:21 PM—laying down across his bed with the words “Thank you for the case.” written in a text message to Hawke.

The case fit nicely, significantly more sturdy than the one he'd had prior. Fenris pawed at its foreign, rubbery sides. He would have bought himself one sooner or later but the gesture was appreciated; Hawke was, after all, the whole reason why Fenris needed a new case to begin with. He held up his phone to the blue light trickling through his dorm window and, lips quirked in a secretly impish smile, he loosened his fingers enough to drop it with a _flump_ to the floor.

It was oddly satisfying, but the satisfaction quickly wore off as Fenris realized that he'd been avoiding Hawke all week.

Sort of. In truth, Fenris had spent the week responding to Isabela's Facebook messages with fervor, hoping that Hawke would notice and get angry with himself for something. He didn't know why he wanted that, and a part of him distantly regretted the sentiment because Hawke actually did get sick, but he was so vacantly angry with the idea that anyone could disappear after kissing him senseless in the backseat of an old, red Jeep that he forewent all reason for the sake of passive-aggressive vengeance.

 _At least I'm aware of it_ , Fenris snarled into the mouth of his wine.

Of course he was aware of it. He'd been aware of it since the day he decided to cover his scars with tattoos, brandishing chaos with order in the same tainted ferocity of an anorexic or a relapsed junkie. He hadn't believed anyone before that. He hadn't taken responsibility for anything until he walked out of the parlor with a blanket wrapped like fishing line around his shoulders.

Hawke didn't know the first thing about him, and Fenris wasn't prepared to let him in close enough to learn. Yes, he wanted to show him, send a warning, tell him that he's stepping too close to the edge, that he's the best person Fenris has ever met even though he killed his sister and desperately begged his mother to be safe.

He knew Hawke was dangerous from the moment he laid eyes on his smile, but he'd let Hawke kiss him anyway. Now it was all he ever thought about.

His phone vibrated but he pointedly ignored it in favor of rolling the bath bomb between his fingers until they were coated with a thin layer of lavender-scented sparkles. Wincing, he wiped his hands on his jeans, lungs heavy with the breath he realized he was holding.

“Np”

Fenris glared down at the message, taken aback by its uncharacteristic, dismissive brevity. Tipping another drink from his bottle, he slowly typed “What are you doing?” and swallowed back the heat that immediately blistered up his throat.

It took too long for Hawke to respond, so Fenris slowly zipped up his hoodie, locked his door, and made his way across the street with his bottle of wine and sketchbook clutched tightly in his fists. October had been riddled by wind and it was nice to see the lake lie still again, even if his fingers were sparkling and his stomach was twisting into a thousand treacherous knots.

_Bzzbzzzt._

With an exasperated mutter of “finally,” Fenris dropped his pencil into the inner hinge of his book and nervously unlocked the screen.

“At some party”

As his eyes scanned over the words multiple times, his heart fell in a tumble to his ankles. _Alright,_ he thought sourly, biting at the edge of his bottom lip while he cast his phone down onto the seawall beside him. Of course Hawke was at “some party”. What else would he be doing with his time? _Have fun._

He opened his sketchbook again, flicked past four pages of complete waste, paused to erase a mark. There was little use in trying to concentrate now that he knew Hawke was out getting drunk and, as Isabela had kindly put it, probably “slutting” all over a pretty blonde girl with eyes the color of the sky. Fenris tore at the corner of a page, the instantaneous anger fusing down to a mild state of sadness and unrest. For a second he regretted hiding from Hawke earlier that week.

The phone buzzed again, and Fenris almost dropped it into the lake in his haste to check it.

“Whatre you up to”

As much as he wanted to ignore it and pretend that Hawke was nothing more than a stitch in his gloves, Fenris found himself responding too eagerly to the four curt words on his screen. He sent “Nothing. Taking a walk. The seniors were loud.”, fumbling blindly for his wine while he tapped the send button multiple times.

_Bzzbzzzt._

“Wanna come by? Med dorms rm 303”

Heartbeat quickening, Fenris cautiously glanced across the lake where the silhouettes of the Medical Buildings split the sky in two. They were less than a mile away.

“I don't know” he typed, swallowing hard. He glanced up at the buildings again before adding, “Would you mind my presence?” _Is anyone touching you right now? Are you drunk?_

_Bzzbzzzt._

“I just invited you”

_Bzzbzzzt._

“Everything okay?”

Fenris dragged his hand through his hair and pressed his the tips of his fingers into his eyes. “I don't know. I am fine.”

“Eh im getting burnt out here anyway”

His fingers typed without consulting him, hitting send before he could stop them. The wine was settling deep in his bones, making it even harder for his hand to comfortably hold the phone in the new case. “You are welcome to join me.”

_Bzzbzzzt._

“Where”

“La Salle. Arts and Sciences side.”

Ten minutes passed before Hawke's next message arrived, and Fenris was already fighting to keep his panicked breath steady as he glared expectantly at his screen.

“Hey merrills crying for some reason  
Im gonna stay until shes good. Let me know if you decide to come”

\--

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Hawke, wincing at the headache that formed almost immediately after he'd entered Anders' dorm.

“I just wanted her to be _happy_ ,” Merrill sniffled into his chest. “All I said was 'Vel, I miss you very much, let's have some _TEA_ ', and—and—it just isn't fair at all, Hawke, not even a little bit is it fair at all...”

“Merrill, you're drunk.”

“I am very much drunk, Hawke, but it just isn't fair. I thought she wanted me to call her, she told me, she said—she said _Merr-eel_ \--she says my name like that, you know, _Merr-eel--call me more often, we can get some tea sometime, we are cousins after all_ and... and... I am not a _baby_ , Hawke!”

Hawke bit his lip to stop himself from smiling, because as awkward as it was to babysit emotional drunks, Merrill was blowing the phone call endearingly out of proportion.

“Well,” he softly comforted, petting the point of her silicon elf ear to stop the cycle of 'I'm not a baby' pouring out of her mouth. “How 'bout you give her a call tomorrow morning when you're not ready to pu—”

And she was off, just as he said it, a flurry of woodsy forest nymph darting through the kitchen and straight to the bathroom that Anders shared with two consistently disgruntled room mates.

Thankfully the music—industrial, because Anders listened exclusively to shirtless men in pleather pants—was loud enough to drown out the sound of Merrill's vomit, and it didn't take long for her to reappear next to him on the couch, chin glistening with what Hawke hoped was water and not stomach acid.

“Feeling better?”

Merrill mumbled something like “you ask so many questions” before her head hit the decorative pillow beside them.

Hawke sat on the couch for another two songs to finish his beer. He didn't expect his phone to chirp again after the last text he'd sent to Fenris, so he wasn't surprised to see nothing when he cautiously glanced down at the screen.

Ah, fuck. It was getting late. Isabela was dressed as a pirate playing beer pong with Darth Vader, two bunnies, Harley Quinn and a zebra, and Varric disappeared a long time ago because the girl from his Fiction 2 class added him on Facebook about fifteen minutes into the party, causing him to sequester himself into the space between Anders' fridge and the trashcan while he lurked every facet of that poor girl's life.

And there Hawke was, dressed in a red witch cloak with a thermal sweater and a pair of black gym shorts underneath, nose itching slightly from the streak of lipstick Isabela put on him, carefully removing Merrill's elf boots from the feet she dropped on his lap.

Somewhere in the background Anders let out a hearty “HAPPY HALLOWEEN!” and, just as Hawke received a red cup from the fins of a sexy goldfish, his phone surprised him with an incoming call.

“Thanks,” he muttered, unlocking the screen with a heavy thumb that froze over Fenris's name. _Oh, fuck_. “Hey—”

“Er. Do I just walk in?”

Hawke's heart practically burst out of his throat as he bore his gaze through the ream of people by the front door. He hadn't heard Fenris's voice since Sunday afternoon and it was doing terrible things to his chest. “You're here?” he rasped.

“What?”

“Yeah,” Hawke corrected, loudly because the speakers suddenly increased the percentage of their synth output by like, four thousand, and his ears were ringing in the heat of sudden nerves. “Just come in.”

His phone lit up as Fenris ended their call, and the few people standing by the front door shuffled slightly in a placid attempt to make some room. Hawke heard Isabela caw “WITTLE FENWIS!” before  
he actually _saw_ 'wittle Fenwis', but when his eyes found him, they watched him stiffen uncomfortably between the arms Isabela threw around his shoulders.

Hawke couldn't hear what she said, but she pointed at the couch and laughed before resuming her game. His gaze locked onto green. Waving slightly, he shifted Merrill's feet and slid closer to her to make room on the couch.

“This is a costume party,” Fenris stated. He was watching Hawke's fingers curl around Merrill's ankle when he sat down.

“Sure is!”

“Are you Little Red Ridi—”

“ _Don't_ ,” Hawke laughed, and the tension between them suddenly dropped the fuck away because Fenris started laughing too. “God, every single fucking person, every _single_ one—”

“I don't blame them. What are you, then?”

“I don't know. A warlock. Some guy in a cloak.”

“A red one.”

Hawke groaned, smelling the radioactive-looking contents of his cup. Apples. “Okay, yeah, a red one.”

“Does it have a hood?”

“Yeees, it has a fucking hood,” Hawke chortled, covering his face in mild affection. It was like the whole fucking week of bipolar avoidance never happened. All he could think about was the way Fenris's hair was getting long, how it fell over his eyes every time he tilted his head down, how often he shook it off his face and how soft Hawke knew it to be.

“So th—”

“ _Would you like a drink, Fenris?_ ” Hawke cut him off, voiced strained in his sudden need to kiss him. His head still hurt but he barely noticed it - Fenris nodded and his hair fell forward again.

They eventually got off the couch and wandered through Anders' apartment-style dorm for like, fifteen minutes, just long enough to finish two cups of “wizard's potion” that resulted in them feeling moderately displaced equilibrium-wise. Fenris wavered between feigned lightheartedness and obvious fucking discomfort the whole time, so, after making sure that Merrill's head was turned toward the floor to prevent her from meeting an early death, Hawke nodded at the door and asked,

“Wanna get outta here?”

Fenris visibly relaxed the moment they stepped outside, his gloved fists loosening their grip on his sketchbook and the bottle of wine he'd shown up with.

Hawke occasionally snatched it from him as they sauntered through campus, passing swigs between them until the bottle ran out halfway down the border of Lake La Salle. Fenris was sober enough to talk coherently, drunk enough to talk _excessively_ , and all Hawke could fucking do was smile tiredly and hope that Fenris didn't actually hate him as much as he thought he did.

He didn't bring that up. He didn't want to know, he didn't give a fuck about it because Fenris was beautiful when he laughed like that.

At some point Fenris asked if he'd be opposed to opening a new bottle of wine and Hawke couldn't think of anything he'd rather do, so he quietly followed Fenris into his building where he got to experience the Hell that is using a communal bathroom before he let himself in through the only non-decorated door on the entire third floor.

Fenris existed within the confines of an exorbitantly tiny room, most of which was occupied by a personal fridge, a generic desk, and an even more generic twin-sized bed layered with all different shades of crumpled blue. Art lacerated his walls – most of them were framed buys, but the ones that weren't looked like they were half-finished sketches by Fenris's own hand. In one corner was a milk crate of vinyls, in another was a record player elevated by several stacks of tattered books that Hawke spent a good minute surveying – Fenris had decent, if moderately pretentious taste.

 _Thank God,_ he thought, laughing while he brushed a layer of dust off the spine of some art philosophy compilation. He accepted a freshly opened bottle of wine and, taking a sip, teased “I don't think there's enough floor.”

“Sorry. You may be the only visitor I've had.”

The comment sent a rush of pride through Hawke's cheeks and he sat down on the bed because Fenris seriously didn't have any fucking room in there at _all_.

Fenris didn't seem to mind as he leaned over his laptop, a scowl crawling across his face after Pandora gave them three consecutive error messages before suddenly shutting down. When he finally got it to work, he dropped down next to Hawke on the bed and buried his face against a raised knee.

“We can just take another walk,” he mumbled, 'we' coming out in a cracked squeak. “If you would like.”

Hawke grinned and leaned back against the wall. He lifted the wine to his lips and looked around; judging by the variety of landscapes on the walls, Fenris really liked the night sky. “Do you ever use colors or paints or anything?”

He handed the bottle of wine over to Fenris, who leaned back against the wall too. “What do you mean?”

“For your pictures.”

“Oh,” Fenris took a sip. “Not usually. That one—” he pointed at a larger sketch toward the top of the glowing-blue window “--has purple in it. The mountains on the door have red, but at the moment it looks gray.”

Hawke took the bottle back, gaze resting softly on a half-finished drawing of a smirking girl. “D'you finish them?”

“Er. Yes.”

“Really?” Hawke laughed. “I have yet to see any finished sketches.”

Fenris buried his face in his gloves. “They exist,” Hawke's heart fluttered with the smile that he heard behind his hands. “They are rare, but they exist.”

“Can I see the next one?”

“Why?”

“Because I _really_ don't believe you,” Hawke chuckled.

They passed the bottle between them in silence for a while, listening to Pandora think really hard about what song to play next. Every time something Fenris liked came on his features lit up, eyebrows raising slightly in an obvious acknowledgment to some memory he probably attached to the song many years ago. A couple of times he even hummed, briefly, and Hawke felt like he wanted to hear him sing. He'd settle for breathing, too.

There was something about the blinds in Fenris's window that made everything look dusky, dark air punctured by slivers of blue, casting horizontal-striped shadows along the walls and the side of Fenris's cheek. Hawke wished he was the photographer type. He wished he had a fancy Nikon round his neck at all times for moments like this, when Fenris's lips were curled like the Cheshire Cat's at the corners, when the dim light in the room all looked like it was from the moon and nothing else.

His throat went dry as it often did in Fenris's company, but as he finished swallowing another mouthful of wine, his hands were caught by fraying gloves, bottle slowly removed from his grasp, senses overcome by lavender and the intoxicating heat of Fenris's green gaze.

Before that night in the car, Hawke had assumed that their first kiss would be as manic as their friendship. For some reason _teeth_ were the highlight of his list; teeth, maybe spit, accusatory whimpers, an occasional apology, all of which would ultimately lead to a regrettable, half-masted blowjob against the side of his Jeep that would end their acquaintance for like, three months.

It hadn't been like that at all. No, kissing Fenris carried the same brand of fire as his eyes, slow and smoldering like flickers just about to go out. It had been the kind of burn that Hawke hadn't known in years, if he'd ever known it at all, the kind that surrounded, suffocated, fucked with his head.

This was the same, except Fenris was the one who'd pulled him in for it with fingers shaking around his neck. Hawke shuddered and let him in, choking around his tongue and falling back onto the bed, arms curled tight around Fenris's waist, his shoulders, grabbing fistfuls of black fabric until his hoodie tumbled to the floor.

When Fenris pulled back he was gasping and Hawke could almost feel the apology forming on his lips, so he shook his head and breathed, “no, c'mere,” eyes pouring love into the tattoos he never knew he had, fingers tangling through the mess of hair above him until Fenris's lips were on him again.

He threw off his own shirt, the scrape of Fenris's gloves against his chest robbing what little breath he had left, and when he realized that Fenris whimpered every time he slid his tongue into his mouth, Hawke sat up, held him by the back of his head, and deepened the kiss hard enough to make Fenris moan.

Somehow his head landed back on the pillow, his throat held captive by hands and teeth, his own fingernails scraping paths down the back of Fenris's blue t-shirt, twisting into his thighs, dragging him in because there wasn't enough of him on his dick and he couldn't believe how fucking crazy Fenris was going on him, all teeth and tongue and ragged gasps of “ _H-Hawke—_ ” while he writhed—

He threw Fenris onto his back with a sharp jerk of his hips, drinking his name off the tip of Fenris's maddening tongue while he pressed down on him, one hand locked tightly into soft white hair white the other unfastened Fenris's belt.

“Hawke—I w-want—” he heard him shudder, and Hawke pressed harder into his dick, swallowing the gasps out of Fenris's mouth while his tongue fucked him in time with his movements.

“I fucking love you like this,” he growled, because he fucking did, and he found himself on his back again, his dick straining painfully as Fenris fisted him out from his shorts, precome slicking the hot friction from his gloves, driving Hawke blind and so close to coming he could scream.

He ripped at Fenris's jeans until all he could feel was skin on skin, the pulse of his cock, vision clouded and all different shades of dark blue while he tasted Fenris's mouth again, hooking his fingers into his slim hips and rolling him forward, ears ringing with broken breaths of _“I want you_ ”-- Hawke didn't even know who they were coming from anymore.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he panted, sliding up the heat of Fenris's crack, and Fenris _paused_ , jaw dropped, sinking down until Hawke's cock barely pushed into him—“ _god, fuck_ ”—he couldn't even take in his tip, eyes wrenched shut in a way that tore Hawke's heart in two.

Hawke fucked up into him, a single shallow thrust to break him, a promise laying claim to his territory, before he curled his fingers into a scar on Fenris's waist and pulled him off his dick, and god damn, Fenris kissed just like he talked, sharp, uncertain, confident, anxious, a mess of white and green, gloved fingers twining around his neck as he rode into the shaking fist Hawke made around him.

Hawke wanted to ask if he had a condom, if he could fuck him like that all night, if he could come over for Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas too, if it was okay that he felt like he needed something he barely understood. He hooked his free arm around Fenris's neck and drew him close, kissing his brow as he whispered,

“Come,” soft and urgent, tightening his hand, pace quickening, thumb pressed blunt against the precome pooling at Fenris's slit. “Come on, come for me—” and Fenris did, orgasm torn out of him in shattered, high pitched gasps, hot come staining through Hawke's fingers and leaking down his wrist.

He jerked himself there, beneath Fenris's light weight, his dick pressed against Fenris's crack and his lips split around Fenris's languid tongue, using come to slick himself while he whipped his hand down his cock once, twice, spilling into his palm and up the length of Fenris's back.

There was a suspended moment, then, the kind that happened in Isabela's serial dramas that usually made him roll his eyes or change the channel while going over everything that was wrong with The CW. His hands strayed up Fenris's shoulders, over long scars and tattoos so bright in the dark he could swear they were glowing, dipping his head back, cradling the side of his face until he fell into the deep green in his eyes while his ears deafened in a blaring roar.

He kissed him, a long, lingering, almost painful kiss that chewed from his heart to his lips, and he knew Fenris felt it too by the way he pawed at his collarbones, the way he collapsed down into him, shaking breaths filtering between them while he used Hawke's lips like a crutch to catch his breath.

Fenris laid still for long moments, coming down in slowing pants against the crook of Hawke's neck, his gloved hands pressing hard into his own face. Every so often his breath hitched with a thick swallow—a slight shake of his head—but Hawke just let him do it, falling into his own pendulous silence, thumb rubbing circles at the base of Fenris's neck as if it could smear his thoughts across his skin.

 _You're something,_ , Hawke mused, distantly aware of the subwoofer blasting downstairs as he spilled his lips over Fenris's mussed hair, heavy and simmering in the ache of his afterglow. _Ah, fuck..._

“Hey,” he rasped, finally. He dragged his fingers up across Fenris's shoulder blades, over his arms, and quietly moved Fenris's hands away from his face.

Fenris was flushed, eyes heavy-lidded and turbulent, but Hawke couldn't help grinning at him because he was so small and gorgeous and clearly fucking wrecked, nestled tightly into the bend of his arm. He could have laid there forever. He really could have, as long as Fenris stared at him that way, as long as he looked at him like he was the moon at the height of a summer night.

Hawke ghosted his fingertips across the streaks of come leaking across Fenris's back. Sitting up, he placed one last kiss to Fenris's temple and reached down in a blind search for his red Party City witch cloak that had dropped to the floor before he'd even gotten to the bed.

It ripped on something, a zipperlike _shhhiiiipff_ and a _snap_ , and the air was immediately clouded with the drugging hues of Fenris's laughter. Hawke smiled, _wow, seriously?_ , yanking one last time at the red fabric until he was able to get part of it across Fenris's back.

“I've got it,” Fenris said, voice stretched thin between a boyish grin as he sat up, wiped himself dry, and dropped the cloak in a wet heap onto Hawke's thighs.

“Yegh, gross.”

“It's yours.”

“Makes it _so_ much worse,” laughed Hawke. He tiredly pulled his shorts back up and gave a lazy tug to Fenris's sleeve. It was weird to see him in a t-shirt, even stranger for that t-shirt to be blue. Hawke loved it. “You have come all over you, still...”

It was only a matter of time before Fenris's wine-happy, afterglowing buzz wore off, so Hawke did everything in his static power to prevent his inevitable crash. He stood up and immediately melted over Fenris's laptop, a sharp cackle spiraling from his lips when Fenris's first reaction was to leap up and wrench his arms away from his desk.

 _Good_ , he thought, holding his hands up as Fenris's grip grew stronger. _Good. Keep smiling._

“Okay, okay, I won't touch, but can you wake Pandora up again?”

Fenris did. He brought up another station and flung himself down onto his twin-sized bed with his bottle of wine in one hand and the torn strip of Hawke's cloak in the other, holding it up toward the ceiling like a kid did with a beloved childhood toy. He was quiet. The brilliant smile had softened to a wavering line, crooning and distant, mildly haunted. The darkness made his green eyes look black but in them Hawke could still see the makings of a flood.

Hawke couldn't let the flood break.

“Black or white?” he asked, voice hoarse, pale.

A pause. “White.”

“Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, Hawke.”

“I know. Cats or dogs?” 

The answer came as a whisper; Hawke thought he heard him say _Mittens_ and it made his insides crumble to the floor.

“Hey, Fenris...?” Hawke said, weak, nervous, weighted. His eyes lingered on some birthday card and a string of rosary beads on the desk before they strayed over to the red fabric that Fenris was vacantly wrapping around his wrist.

“Hm?”

Hawke cautiously lowered himself down onto the bed. Fenris's hair was fanned out against the pillow, two strands striped across his face, resting along the edge of his cheekbone. His eyes were still lidded and tired, but his fingers fidgeted, alternating between slow and fast and catching the piece of cloak every time it slipped from their grasp. He was about to tell him then-- _you're perfect, I really want you, please have me, whose eyes do you have_ \--when Fenris turned toward him with his arm outstretched.

“Hawke, can you—”

Hawke gave him a low laugh, brimming with relief as he leaned over and tightened the strip around his wrist. “Pull your glove up a little,” he breathed, twisting a knot and tugging the fabric to measure its strength. “There you go.”

He watched Fenris bring his new wristband to his teeth and idly mused about his vacant oral fixation that probably developed the day he fucked up his chin. _Tell me_. Deciding that it would be better off manifesting against his lips, Hawke curled two fists into Fenris's collar and dragged him back down into a kiss that lasted far past the end of the night.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely appreciate all of your comments, concerns, and -- most importantly -- patience. Two and a half months is a long time and I'm really grateful to have readers who occasionally prod me with the "you doin' okay, buddy?" stick.
> 
> This story would be dead if not for the constant support and encouragement (and screaming) from my absolutely brilliant beta, [Carrionflower](archiveofourown.org/users/Carrionflower/). To him I owe my greatest thanks, and I patiently await that jar of tears.

When Fenris woke up the following morning, he was cold.

It wasn't unusual. He often shivered despite the blue comforter he burrowed beneath, but this time the cold was accompanied by a hazy, lingering headache, and his eyes watered when they met the sunlight that bled through the cracks in his blinds.

_Hungover. That much is obvious,_ he thought, dragging a hand over his face. His pants were off, his neck stung with bruises and his hair smelled like the backseat of someone else's car. Around his wrist was a strip of red velveteen that glistened weakly whenever he moved.

Fenris froze.

As a sheath of clouds shifted over the daybreak outside, his heart leapt to his throat. He was alone. Cold. His eyes darted from the vacant doorway to the foreign divot in his pillow, from the shadows shifting along the wall to the costume cloak puddled in the corner.

Hawke had been there. _Had been._

Panicked, Fenris jumped out of his bed and snatched his phone off the desk. There were no missed calls, no unanswered texts, no slippers in the middle of his dorm room floor.

“Okay,” he muttered, frantic, opening his log to Hawke's name. A fourteen-second phone call at 12:19 AM, before that a conversation about a party, an invitation, a comment about Merrill crying in the Medical dorms. That was it. No “good night,” no “let's talk about what happened.”

“Okay,” he repeated, shaking his head slightly, a quick jerk to startle himself awake. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

The walls were spinning like he was still drunk but his legs threatened to give out from something more than just alcohol, and he felt the shallow grind of his teeth thicken with the anger that sank to his chest. _Of course Hawke left._

Hawke didn’t think about people. The whole world shook whenever he laughed. Everybody loved him, his charismatic grin, his willingness to help someone move, to buy a round for the table.

Fingers shaking, Fenris hit his name on the display. A brief pause to recognize how uncomfortable the new case felt in his grip, then a rumbling _fuck you_ , nails scratching in manic bouts down the sides of his phone, _fuck you, fuck you, fuck you_. He canceled the accidental phone call before it had a chance to ring and immediately scrolled up to his options, where he allowed his thumb to momentarily hover over the icon of a garbage can. _Fuck you_ —

_Are you sure you want to delete this?_

“Fuck,” Fenris spat, scowling down at the picture he’d inconspicuously taken during a later research session, after Hawke had convinced him to go outside and share a smoke before they moved onto the next chapter. It was dark, too dark to see much more than the silhouette of Hawke’s smirking profile, the faint glow at the end of his cigarette, and no sooner had Hawke noticed it than he said “I want one of you too. Aw c’mon, stop, please don’t hide your face, I wanna see you.”

No, Hawke didn’t think about people at all. He got them drunk, pretended to fuck them clean, let them believe they had something in common, an interest, a career path, a preferred author. His colors weren’t real. His sister was studying abroad and his first girlfriend baked him a cake for his birthday. She called his mother “Leandra”.

Fenris shook the thought out of his head and stabbed his thumb down, used his nail to scratch at the word _deleted_ , and just like that, Hawke was gone. Their conversations were erased. His number. The picture, everything – and Fenris, still hot with rage, opened his Facebook page with intent to delete both Merrill and Isabela to further ensure that Hawke could never exist again.

But then, before his phone had the chance to load its web browser, the handle to his dorm flickered; once, twice, before the door swung open. Hawke tiptoed inside with two cardboard cups of coffee in his hands and a folded, brown paper bag dangling from between his teeth.

“Omh goodf!” Hawke smiled and kicked the door shut behind him. He didn't remove the bag from his mouth when he continued, “youm're upf. Mm gotf fome comffee amf breakfaftf.”

Fenris let his hands drop to his sides, the relief so sudden and palpable that his heart skipped a beat and his phone fell to the floor with a muted _flump_. It made Hawke laugh, and he pinched his bag between two strained fingers so he could say, “wow, I'm glad I got you that case” with enough gleeful clarity to make Fenris regret waking up as early as he did. “You good?”

Fenris nodded. It was a harsh, dragging motion that pulled at the muscles in his neck, slowed by the pieces he was trying hard to put together. Hawke was gone; he didn't exist anymore, and though Fenris could barely remember much from the night before he was certain that Hawke wasn't supposed to be standing there in the middle of his room with two cups of coffee and a wagging tail.

Hawke was a good son who ripped the hearts out of everyone around him with a mere smile. There was no reason for him to be there.

“You sure?”

Nodding again, Fenris let his gaze land on the coffee cups in Hawke's hands. He grabbed the comforter from his bed and threw it around his shoulders, vaguely aware of all the scars and tattoos showing through the little amount of clothing he wore.

“Fenris,” Hawke said gently, shifting from foot to slippered foot. He looked worried. “You gotta tell me if you're not good.”

But Fenris just wrapped his blanket tighter around himself and asked, gravelly, numb, “you brought coffee?”

“Er, yeah?” Hawke grinned and waved the paper bag slightly, spilling some coffee on his fist despite the stopper in the hole of its top. “And bagels. I got a yellow one and a cinnamon raisin one in case you didn't want the yellow one.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't know why it's yello—”

“No,” Fenris interrupted. His head hurt more than it did when he first woke up, so he covered his face with a gloved hand and took a deep, shaking breath. “Why did you bring coffee?”

The light in Hawke's eyes instantly flickered away but Fenris didn't care to see it again. It could have been the hangover or the curious weight of the red band tied to his wrist. He didn't know, and as the stillness broke with the sound of crinkling paper, as Hawke dropped the bag and both coffees down onto the bedside refrigerator and turned back to him with an uneasy grin forcing its way back onto his mouth, Fenris was appalled by what little sense it made.

Hawke offered, “because I figured you might want it,” and crammed his hands into the pockets of his gym shorts. He shrugged and tilted his head from side to side, eyes descending to Fenris’s feet. “I mean, I wanted it, so I assumed—”

Fenris swallowed, the guilty pressure in his chest forcing a break in his breathing. “You assumed?”

“Yeah.”

“You a-assumed th—”

“I’m still talking about the coffee, Fenris,” Hawke laughed nervously. He dragged a line between them with his toe. “You wanted it, right?”

Silence fell with the implication. Hawke's smile faltered, if only a little, and Fenris's fists were clenched so tight that his fingernails scraped into his palms despite the black fabric between them. It was only when Fenris's jaw dropped to form the words please leave that Hawke stepped closer, so close that Fenris almost coughed at the familiarity of his thermal sweater, a combination of laundry, dog, and unsmoked tobacco, just like his house and his car, the previously vacant space on the pillow.

“Can I touch you?” Hawke breathed, stepping closer still, and Fenris, wringing his fingers together so hard the threads in his blanket snapped clean, found himself nodding.

He dropped his head against the curve of Hawke’s shoulder as a sigh filtered between them. It could have been from anyone – Fenris couldn’t feel himself breathing anymore, not with Hawke’s hands at his jaw or his lips at his ear whispering, “I like this a lot, Fenris. You’re gonna tell me if you’re not good.”

Throat closing, Fenris nodded again. Chills crept down his arms at the rough vibration of Hawke’s voice. A thumb traced the scars across his chin, another down his cheekbone, tilting his head back slightly until Hawke had his lips pressed against his in tight, stabbing kisses that marred his bones with weakness. Fenris felt himself shake at the hands tightening around his jaw, and when he pressed into the touch, when he pawed fiercely at Hawke’s chest, he found himself collapsing back onto his bed with Hawke's knee carving a path between his legs and Hawke's arm hooking heavily around his shoulders. Beneath the vacant mutters of “I can go” and “I'll leave you alone, I promise” clouding over Fenris's breathless “no, stay”s, he sank into the drugging whirl of Hawke's scent, opening his mouth to taste the red-eye he undoubtedly bought himself that morning.

Hawke’s lips instantly parted for him, his tongue a hot welcome between Fenris’s teeth, begging him closer with desultory slides and catching gently at the edge of his lip. With a sharp inhale Fenris curled up into him, fighting his comforter to get a leg over Hawke’s gym shorts as he practically disintegrated beneath him, meeting his tongue in replete quivers until Hawke dragged away to lay kisses down his throat, a faint chuckle lost in the midst of a moan.

That's how it worked. When Hawke was near him, it was warm. Strangely aching in a satisfying way that disallowed the “no”s from surfacing, comfortable like Hawke would rather die than stray from the script Fenris constantly rewrote to suit himself. _But when he goes,_ Fenris thought, nearly sad in his awareness. He freed a hand to lock through an opening in Hawke’s arm, cringing at a latent pain in his wrist, and hissed as canines travelled smoothly across his collar. Something was whispered but Fenris couldn’t hear it because Hawke had started to move, slight and nearly instinctual, bicep stretching taut beneath his fingers.

There was a flicker of fingertips against his jaw as Hawke lured him up to another breathless kiss, rolling them over so Fenris was tangled in a mess of sheets atop of his chest, teeth bared and scraping, pulling out a moan, strong arms folding around his blanketed shoulders. It was a foreign thing, and Fenris kneaded into his sweater with the same ferocity with which he’d hated him not ten minutes prior.

“How's your head?”

Fenris responded by leaving his own trail of bite marks down his throat. The moment Hawke would leave, he knew, the moment Hawke would leave—

“No, hey,” Hawke laughed, oblivious. He brought his fingers to Fenris’s hair and eased him off his neck with a gentle tug. “Seriously. Do you need an ibuprofen or something?”

With a stubborn jerk of his head, Fenris managed to free himself from Hawke’s hands. “It is fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Hawke found the hem of Fenris's t-shirt and skated a thick line up his ribs. “I got some just in case,” he breathed, but Fenris ignored him like he ignored his blistering headache to assault his mouth again, bearing down on Hawke’s erection as it twitched beneath the blankets.

“Wait. Wait, Fenris.”

Fenris tore his teeth off Hawke’s lip to groan, “ _what?_ ”

“When's work?” His voice was low, rolling, a lull in the space behind Fenris's ear that made him slow his movements.

“Er. Eleven.”

“Can I pick you up later?”

Fenris winced and rolled to the side, dragging his hands over his face. “I have a lot of homework to finish,” he mumbled, and though it was true it lingered in his throat like a lie.

But Hawke just sank his brow against the divot of his shoulder and said, “do it at my house,” which made Fenris's stomach hurt, so he shook his head and sat up under the guise of inspecting the contents of the paper bag, pulling out an egg bagel that still felt warm to the touch.

“See? It's fucking yellow,” laughed Hawke in response, the words coming squeaked and mildly hysterical. Fenris felt a hand slide down his spine and he almost shied away from it, until Hawke perched himself up on an elbow to grab the birthday card from the corner of the desk.

Distracted, Fenris took a sip from his coffee (cream, no sugar – he'd only told Hawke once and he'd gotten it right every time). “Egg bagels are yellow, Hawke,” he told him, watching the way Hawke's eyes turned gold in the sun, the way they skittered across the card like Ilsa's little fireflies.

“What the shit’s an egg bagel? I asked for plain,” Hawke smirked. He held up the card with a snort. “What's this?”

Fenris frowned. _It's none of your business_ , he thought, but the explanation seemed to form on its own accord, and before he knew it he was placing down his breakfast and turning back to the glittering honey behind him to mutter, “I have a sister.”

Hawke's eyebrows raised as he held the quilled paper up to the light of the window. “Seriously?”

“I suppose.”

“You _suppose_?” Hawke barked out a laugh, casting the card aside and spreading them both back onto the bed. “Is she hot?”

If that comment had come through a text or even one of their late-night calls, Fenris would have chucked his phone into the wall with a nasty growl. But as it was, it came through a kiss to the edge of his shoulder, long and grinning, so Fenris just rolled his eyes and said, “never met her” as he let himself go limp in Hawke's arms.

Of course Hawke's next question was _seriously?_ and Fenris couldn't fight the smile that pulled his lips when he felt Hawke's fingers land on the back of his neck. “Seriously.”

“That’s not weird at all,” Hawke played. “Do you know anything about her?”

No, Fenris didn't know a thing. The writer simply labeled herself as “V” as if she'd assumed that Fenris knew her name well enough to get away with shorthand. Maybe she used to write it out. Fenris didn't particularly care, and he rubbed his eyes into Hawke's arm, sighing at the scratch of fabric against his forehead while he told him that.

“You've gotta care, Fenris,” Hawke argued softly. His thumb stilled its circles, choosing instead to rest between Fenris's shoulder and neck.

“Well, I don't.”

It was true. He'd received the cards for as long as he could remember but never gave it a second thought until he’d been sent to the middle school psychiatrist for scratching a picture of a hanging girl into the cover of his science binder. “It looks like you,” the psychiatrist had told him, her hand a forceful burn against his sleeve, “is this supposed to be you?”

_“No.”_

_“Who is it, Fenris?”_

_“You tell me.”_

The psychiatrist had tried to befriend him by pulling out a file he didn't know he had. In it were brochures for adoption agencies, phone numbers to various churches and social workers who worked too hard for their minimal pay. Fenris remembered one of those social workers, actually. He never knew his name, and in his childish creativity decided to call him by an assortment of weather phenomena because his hair was long and gray, like a satellite image of a hurricane or a thick blanket of autumn _fog_.

He shook his head again and huddled deeper into Hawke's arms. “I'm sorry,” he bit, strained. “I assume you'd do many things for your sister. Sorry.”

Hawke nodded against his neck but didn't say anything more than, “I can't wait til you're outta work tonight,” before he latched his teeth to Fenris’s pulse and laughed at the way Fenris shuddered in response. “Lemme come get you, Fenris.”

 

\--

 

At 10:15, Hawke followed Fenris onto the bus because he’d apparently left his car home in anticipation for all the alcohol at Anders’ Halloween party. They were mostly quiet for the ride, tired and wishing they still had their coffees to keep them warm, but at least Fenris had the forethought to take Hawke's ibuprofen before they left the dorm so his head wasn't pounding anymore. Apart from the occasional press of a knee or an arm, Hawke didn't make any efforts to touch him, and Fenris didn't know whether he was hurt or absolutely grateful for it.

The work day dragged by slower than his Sociology of Deviance class ever did, minutes feeling like hours, each customer interaction elongated by “um”s and “hmm”s that drove Fenris crazy enough to take three additional fifteen-minute breaks behind Tally's back. Every so often his phone would vibrate with an incoming text and he hid in an unoccupied aisle to answer them with an excited weight in his throat:

“Pizza tonight? Or i can make pasta” – _Either works._

“Should i pick up sprite” – _No. Everything is fine._

“Wanna get dinner out instead? My treat” – _I have to do my homework._

“Oh right. Ok so pizza” – _Thank you._

“I cant stop watching SVU” – _SVU?_

“YOUVE NEVER WATCHED LAW AND ORDER?”  
“?????” – _Oh. Special Victims Unit._

“Thank god”.

There'd been a couple of hours of silence in which Fenris's unanswered text of “I am really tired” plagued the icon of his message window so much that he actually turned off his phone for the duration of his lunch break. Those minutes were the longest; the teenagers in the Manga section were extra loud, the coffee grinder at the storefront cafe never seemed to stop running, the annoying girl at the register kept giggling about her new pet bunny to anyone who'd listen. Fenris tripped over the same stack of magazines twice and there was a book signing in the children's section that he constantly had to clean up after, but then, at around 3 in the afternoon, he turned his phone back on to a message from Hawke that read, “Varric and anders are outlaws”, and another that read “Ugh mitz just ate my guitar case” and he was suddenly able to breathe again.

When his shift finally ended, Fenris bolted out of Josie's Books with his messenger bag slamming against his hip and his hair blocking the majority of his working vision. He didn't have to go too far; at the end of the street, parked expertly between a Lotus and a rusting pickup truck, was the old red Jeep, and against it was Hawke, bent over his phone with a grin curling around a cigarette at the corner of his mouth.

 

–

After spending half the night crammed against the wall in Fenris's generic, tiny-ass dorm room bed, Hawke decided that sleep topped the list of his Most Favorite Activities Ever. Sure, he didn't make much of an effort to get it and he didn't particularly care for sleeping as an active verb, but sharing a bed with Fenris had been shitty enough to make him regret the years he’d spent avoiding sleep under the pretense of there not being enough hours in a day.

Fuck, was Fenris disturbed or _what_. If he wasn't twisting and turning, he was gasping, or crying, or scraping his nails down his arms hard enough to leave faint lacerations on his skin.

Hawke had lain awake watching the scenes unfold behind his restless eyelids, hands suspended slightly, unsure whether to rouse him or let him fight through it naturally like his undergrad Abnormal Psych course once advised. The worst episode probably lasted less than fifteen minutes but the idea of Fenris going through that fucking shit every night was ultimately what prevented Hawke from getting any sleep; he ended up passing the hours by grading abstracts and reading crappy Google Scholar articles for his upcoming Psychopathology paper, lowering the brightness of his phone's display to keep Fenris comfortably settled against his chest despite the ragged sobs that filled the room. The cycle repeated a couple of times, but Fenris seemed calm by dawn and Hawke was able to enjoy the peaceful stillness of a rising blue sun, playing with the errant hair across Fenris’s forehead and the dried come along the edge of his shirt.

He nearly fell asleep walking home from the bus stop and spent the afternoon passed out on his couch, legs covered by Mittens and eyes covered by a textbook (open to page 143, part four of Heuristic Decision Processes Pile of Shit) until Isabela, still dressed like a pirate, floundered through the front door and scared him awake by hollering “I'M KILLING MERRILL!” over the credits of Law and Order SVU.

He cracked one eye open, sobbed pitifully into the hinge of his book, and rolled over to submerge his face in the corner of a cushion.

“NO, HAWKE,” shrieked Isabela. Mittens stretched and balanced 120 pounds of solid muscle upon a paw that practically shattered the bone in Hawke's calf.

“ _Oooooowwww_ ,” he sobbed.

Quickly planting her ass right where Mittens had been, Isabela scolded “don't be a baby” and punctuated it with a ruthless pluck to the inside of Hawke’s knee. She still reeked of rum, but when Hawke lifted his head to scowl at her he saw that her eyeliner was smeared in streaks that nearly hit her jaw.

“Did you cry?” he asked, mildly concerned, immediately dropping his head back down to the couch.

“No! I mean, maybe?”

Hawke's legs twitched beneath her as she took her boots off and threw them across the living room. Her ass, as much as she refused to believe it, actually did house a few bones. “Ow, dude, sit still at least. Why're we killing Merrill?”

“Be _cause_ , Hawke,” Isabela huffed. “She disappeared for like four hours last night.”

He turned onto his back, draped an arm over his eyes and tiredly responded, “okay, did she come back?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And is she still back?”

“ _Yeah, but_ —”

Hawke smiled lightly. “But what, Bel?”

“Okay. So, Merrill left after you left, right? Well Anders called the police, and—”

Snorting, Hawke sleepily repeated, “Anders fucking called the police?”

Isabela landed an open-handed smack against his sternum. It didn't hurt, but the contact made a loud enough _crack_ to send Mittens scurrying into the kitchen with his nub tail hidden between his legs. “Wow, are you going to let me finish or no?”

Hawke nodded through a stifled yawn.

“Okay. Anders called the police because you know how he is, and it turns out that Varric ran out of weed so he sent this kid to go get some.” Isabela was already out of breath, and she bounced a little on Hawke's legs before she continued, “so. The cops show up so Anders can file an official missing persons report, but it turns out that he can't because she wasn't gone long enough, right?”

“This is a really long story.”

“Ohmygodshutup. Anyway so the cops are like, 'no, we can't file this for like a day because she's an adult—which she's not because she's a baby—BUT we can alert the county to keep an eye out', right? And then just when Anders is like, cool, okay, the _kid_ with the _weed_ barges into the door with Varric's dealer and literally yells, I GOT THE SHIT, BITCHES—no, stop, it's not funny.”

Hawke squeezed the bridge of his nose and bit his lip to stop laughing. “Okay, it's not funny. Can we get to the point though? Please?”

“Basically, Varric went into alert mode and shoved the kid out the door, which obviously made him the target for questioning, right? And then the cops looked at me and asked me if I knew what was going on, so maybe I cried? But then they were like, 'roar, whose house is this?' so _now Anders and Varric are in jail_.”

“WHAT?” Hawke bolted upright. “THEY'RE _IN JAIL_?!”

Isabela nodded frantically, chest heaving slightly from all the breathing she forgot to do.

“HOW THE HELL ARE THEY IN _JAIL_?”

“I don’t know but they are and it’s your fault.”

“What?” Hawke blinked. “Wh— how's it my fault?”

“Because probably none of it would have happened if you were there.”

Well, that was complete bullshit because Hawke would've passed out way the fuck before the cops arrived. There was a long moment of silence while his head reeled, and he distantly sent his thanks to the universe for the fact that Fenris wanted to duck out of the party so soon, but when his eyes made contact with Isabela's again, they both burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

“Oh god,” Hawke cackled, playfully pushing Isabela's thigh with his free foot. “Do I need to make phone calls now?”

–

Anders and Varric were still in jail when Hawke tried to call them, so he turned the volume up on his phone, changed into a pair of jeans, and stuffed Mittens into the Jeep at around 8:45 to get Fenris from work. He'd made a point to remain in as much contact as possible, filling Fenris in on mild details regarding the unfortunate outcome of Merrill's disappearance and the guitar case the dog chewed up while he napped on the couch. Fenris texted back instantly each time. Hawke loved it.

He arrived at Josie's Books a little too early, and though he really wanted to distract the shit out of Tally while she counted all the loose change in the registers, he decided to smoke one of Isabela's half-finished cigarettes against the side of his car while Mittens scouted the sidewalk for a place to piss. Moments later, his phone chirped with an incoming text from Varric:

“I JUST GOT OUT OF JAIL BOYYYY”

Hawke laughed and shook his head, balancing the cigarette at the corner of his lips as he responded, “Dude wtf”, his eyes watering slightly from the waft of smoke that drifted up his cheek.

_Chirp!_

“Yeah fun story. Call you later. Leandra sends you love”

“Youre with my mom?”

Just as Hawke hit the send button, a flutter of white filled the corner of his eye and he glanced up in time to see Fenris running toward him.

“Hi,” he said, flicking the cigarette into the street and shoving his phone into his pocket, automatically throwing an arm around Fenris to take the messenger bag off his shoulder. Fenris stiffened for a moment before he let him, green eyes wide and staring.

“Your dog is here,” Fenris stated, and Hawke took it as a 'hello', opening the backseat door to toss in Fenris's stuff and throwing a mess of papers and granola wrappers to the floor so Mittens could sit comfortably too.

The short drive allowed them just enough time to go over Fenris's day at work—“typical and boring,” he said, staring pointedly out the window to his right—and when they pulled into the driveway, Hawke cut the engine, hushed Mittens' enthusiastic protests with a gentle whistle, and asked, “do you wanna just go home?”

To which Fenris sighed and said, “n-no, we're already here,” and let himself out of the Jeep. His hands flew up to his mouth, nervously picking at his bottom lip as he remained a few good paces behind Hawke all the way up to the bedroom.

“I'm serious, Fenris,” Hawke continued. He plugged in his Christmas lights and clicked the door shut behind them. “I don't mind driving you back.”

“It is fine.”

“You sure?”

Fenris leered up at him. “Are you going to prod me all night?”

_Okay, then_ , Hawke thought, forcing a smile as he held up his hands. He quickly bounced to his closet, pulled out the black beanbag chair that he'd stolen from Isabela's bedroom last Easter (she never noticed) and rooted it up against the wall closest to his bed.

“So I don't have an actual chair in here,” he said carefully, glancing over at Fenris's gorgeously dim profile and the hair that framed it. “Aw. It's getting long.”

“ _What?_ ”

Hawke shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Your hair's getting long,” he clarified, then, laughing, he nodded over to the beanbag. “Bed or giant marshmallow?”

Pulling out his Dell, two spiral books and accidentally flinging four pens across the floor, Fenris slowly dropped down onto the beanbag with a sigh. Hawke wasn’t surprised to find himself immediately ignored, so he picked up Fenris’s pens and handed them to him, muttering a quick “you’re welcome” that went unanswered as he threw himself onto his bed hard enough to hit the wall.

With midterms approaching fast and deadlines looming hard, Hawke’s inbox was incredibly swamped. He sifted through pages of hopeless pleas from students that were doing just fine, several half-joking plots for his death (mostly poison), two emails from Isabela that he didn’t bother opening, and a discrete bribe in exchange for the prompt of their final paper, which was so well-worded that Hawke read it twice before he realized that the student was actually offering to fuck him.

“Wow, I really need to report this,” he typed, slack-jawed and frowning, “but I’m just going to ignore it and hope that it won’t happen again. You’ll get the prompt in a few weeks. Like everyone else. Wow.”

Agreeing to be DuPuis’ TA was one of the worst things Hawke had ever decided to do. It beat his infected tattoo, the time he’d tried to piss through the screen of his bedroom window, the time he and Varric agreed to snort molly in front of a Denny’s during a hurricane on their mini-vacation to Florida. At least the screen didn’t threaten his life and he never once had to tell the wind, “no, it’s in the syllabus, please just read the goddamn syllabus” as it blew Varric’s saliva directly into his mouth.

“...Are you using your guitar as a desk?”

The question came after forty-five minutes of daunting silence. Hawke snapped his head up in surprise, catching Fenris’s eye before grinning. “Hm? Oh. Yeah.”

“Alright.”

_And thus concludes our longest conversation tonight,_ thought Hawke, taking the opportunity to load Pandora up on his laptop. He glared at Fenris as he hit play, momentarily searching for an indication of annoyance before finally cracking open his Psychopathology texts to catch up on the collective 152 pages of motherfucking reading assignments due the following afternoon.

The first study was boring enough to work up an appetite, so naturally Hawke ordered a half-plain, half-veggie-supreme pizza with a 2-liter of Sprite and something called a “cookie pie” that he spent almost ten minutes researching on Google.

When Fenris spoke again, the pizza came and went, the Sprite silently passed between them, and Pandora had fallen asleep twice.

“Er. Hawke?”

Hawke glanced over at him, immediately flinging his book aside, not bothering to hide his relief at the new distraction. “What’s up?”

Fenris fidgeted a little in place. “A-are you allowed to answer something for our class?”

“Uh, maybe,” Hawke laughed. He considered telling Fenris about the girl who offered to ride him in exchange for his broken TA contract. “Depends on the question.”

“Sorry. I don’t understand how future behavior studies can be, er—more sensitive to culture.”

Snorting, Hawke asked, “what chapter’re you on? Stereotypes or whatever?” – Fenris nodded – “‘kay. What’s the problem?”

Fenris sighed and grounded himself. “I-I’ve always had to consider the inevitability of prejudice,” he skirted, cautious, shrugging, “but this article claims that future studies will have more emphasis on—er—culture. Sorry.”

Hawke thoughtfully shook his head. “No, no you’re good,” he winced and crossed his legs. “Like. Okay. You know your bucket?”

Two green eyes glazed over. Hawke waited for Fenris to drop his hands from his face, smiling gently at the fingertips that poked out from his gloves. “I mean, what’re your cores?”

“Oh. Um, belonging, understanding, controlling?”

“Yeees,” Hawke crooned, still smiling. “You got the ‘buck’ part.”

Fenris shrugged again before quietly adding, “trusting and enhancing.”

Laughter poured between them. “Buck-te,” Hawke teased. “So forget everything I ever said about destructive behavior being universal. Okay no, I mean, it’s mostly universal, because a guy can’t just go and kill someone in Russia just because Russia thinks it’s normal, but—”

“Russia doesn’t think it’s normal.”

“Yeah, probably not,” he agreed as he quickly opened the folder labeled _BULLSHIT 4_ on his desktop. “Here, this should help. Did DuPuis give you guys the Fiske article or was that my job?”

Shaking his head very slightly, Fenris told him, “I never received anything by Fiske.”

“Oh.” _Well, shit._ “Want to help me write a statement of apology for tomorrow’s lecture?”

Living up to the responsibility standard on the third bulletin of the dean’s Document of Expectations, Hawke sent a mass email to the students in his section with the attached article, a deadline extension, and a vaguely inappropriate joke that probably flew over everyone’s head.

Except Fenris’s; his gloved hands jumped to his face the moment he read it. “Sorry,” he laughed, cheeks burning red in the dim light of the room, “oh, God. Sorry.”

_You never have to apologize for anything, ever, for the rest of your life._ Hawke smiled softly to himself, closed his laptop and idly plucked a few notes on his guitar, pausing to tune the D string before he attempted the ridiculous melody that Isabela threw at him the other day. He was about to ask, “is this going to bug you?” but Fenris visibly relaxed against the wall, sinking so deep into the beanbag that half of him disappeared.

“You play well,” he mumbled. His voice sounded as small as he looked. “Did you finish your homework?”

Hawke knitted his eyebrows together. “Nah,” he said quietly, slowly retracing the last few notes after he fucked up a transition to the bridge. “I’ll skim it later. This okay?”

Fenris hummed a low affirmation and dropped his gaze back to his laptop, lips soft and idle around the end of a pen. It still felt strange having Fenris on his bedroom floor like that, and Hawke averted his eyes for a second, sure that his face was flushed with all the blood that ceased its circulation to his hands. When he looked up again, Fenris was staring at him, arms crossed tight over his abdomen, face alight with something that looked a little too close to sadness for Hawke’s liking. He wanted to play some horrible upbeat punk song to cheer him up, one with lyrics about key lime pie that would require him to stretch his vocals so thin that he’d sound like John Lydon on a bad high, but the way Fenris looked at him just made his fingers stutter and his lungs drop down to the pit of his stomach.

Hawke gave up on playing, mouth running dry. “C’mere,” he breathed, and he leaned back against the wall as Fenris instantly complied.

Fuck, he was gorgeous, standing at the edge of Hawke’s bed with his hands fisted in the pockets of his hoodie. He looked like he didn’t know what to do so Hawke just set down his guitar, parted his knees and repeated, hoarse, “c’mere,” as his world darkened in the cast of Fenris’s shadow.

There was a moment of hesitation, thick and still, before Fenris slowly crawled onto the bed. Then he latched both hands to the underside of Hawke’s jaw and drowned him in a kiss so deep that he had to sit up to catch his breath.

When Fenris pulled back it was with lidded eyes, face periodically shaded by the flicker of lights that dangled from the walls around them. Hawke slid his palm into the crook of his neck, combed a thumb across the scar he liked to hide the most. It wasn’t particularly noticeable despite its length, starting just below the contour of his mouth, a crooked line that bled down to his collar, shallow in the way that suggested it had once run much deeper.

“Please stop that,” Hawke whispered, jabbing his thumb beneath Fenris’s chin to keep it from dipping any further. He bit his lip and toyed at the zipper to Fenris’s hoodie, the snap of its teeth dragging jagged and slow, and just as Fenris winced, just as Hawke felt the tip of Fenris’s tongue once again trace his, his pocket began to vibrate and the room echoed with the opening hook to Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer.

_Oh fuck off_ , thought Hawke, and he instantly latched an arm around Fenris’s waist to still his sudden jerk. “Chill, it’s Varric.”

When Fenris audibly protested, Hawke tightened his hold, murmuring “one sec” as he shifted to fish out his phone. Clearing his throat, he bit back the sour taste in his mouth and answered the call with the sweetest, most conversational voice he could muster:

“Sooo, how was jaaail?”

Varric responded with a hearty laugh. “Fucking excellent. We got our own cell. Jesus, Hawke, it's so much harder to piss next to Anders than it is to aim for the toilet through Bel’s legs.”

“I forgot you did that,” Hawke groaned, to which Varric responded, “yeah, you did too, asshole.”

“Nope, don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawke humorously widened his eyes up at Fenris before he pulled him down to his chest. “Are you with my fucking mom?”

Varric cackled. “Yeah,” he sighed, “yeah, we sure are.”

“Okay. Can I ask why?”

“Well we both know Bart couldn’t be fucked to drive two hours down a mountain to pick my ass up from anywhere. And she’s dating a lawyer.”

“A fucking _real estate lawyer_. You couldn't just call me?”

“Nah,” Varric laughed again on the other end of the line. “I feel like you would'a gotten arrested too if you showed up.”

Hawke swallowed thickly as Fenris’s fingers walked up the underside of his sweater. “Thanks,” he said, abdomen twitching slightly at the contact, “is mom pissed?”

“She ain't exactly happy, but she made french toast and we get to sleep in your bed.”

“I’m so jealous of Anders. I really thought we’d go to jail together, just the two of us,” Hawke laughed, idly bringing a hand down over Fenris's hair. “Are you getting charged for something? What the fuck?”

“Yeah,” Varric snorted. Hawke could hear his mother asking Anders a question in the background. “I'm getting charged with possession even though I wasn't possessing anything, and our pal here's got an outstanding speeding ticket that they discovered when they ran his info. It'll be fine.”

“NOTHING IS FINE!” Anders yelled into the phone. “I'm going to get my license to practice revoked—”

Varric mumbled a quick “hold on,” then said, “you don't even _have_ a license to practice, calm your tits. You there?”

Lowering his lips to the top of Fenris's head, Hawke responded, “yep.”

“Yeah. We got an arraignment on Tuesday, so that's cool. I'm probably gonna either plead nolo or guilty.”

Hawke had to pull the phone away from his ears because both Anders and his mother shouted “DON'T PLEAD GUILTY!” and the open floor plan of her house made it sound like an entire live-studio audience was present in her living room.

“Oh my god,” Hawke cackled, “ _please_ plead guilty.”

“Fucking exactly! See? Your favorite son thinks I should plead guilty—oh, shit, sorry Hawke—”

There was a split second of static as the phone was obviously snatched from Varric's hand. “ _Garrett Hawke, you will not jeopardize your friend's future any more than you already have._ ”

He could almost hear the wagging of her finger. “Hi, mom,” he said flatly, and apparently Fenris found something funny in that because he buried his face into Hawke's chest to stifle a laugh.

“Hi, honey,” Varric responded. “Your mom's driving us back in the morning. We have to clean the garage as immediate retribution.”

“Really? Thank God. I was supposed to do that on Thanksgiving.”

After a pause for chewing, Varric asked, “who’re you with?” and Hawke was suddenly filled with nostalgia for the smell of his mother’s french toast.

“Hm? Why?”

“Because you’re obviously with someone. I know that voice.” He let out a dramatic gasp and Hawke, anticipating the next line of thought, immediately started humming against Fenris’s hair to prevent Varric’s voice from travelling too far. “Christ, are you getting blown right now?”

Hawke continued to hum, varying his melody from Isabela’s new song to Varric’s ringtone as Fenris shied away in mild confusion. Somewhere in the background his mother squeaked in disgust and Anders groaned “ _again_?”, but Varric’s audible swallow overshadowed it, resonating when he continued, “so who is it?”

“Fenris,” Hawke said, discreetly adding, “and no, by the way. None of that.”

“What, seriously?”

“Yep. At all.”

It didn’t take long for Anders to have his third meltdown of the night or for Varric to hastily say, “we’re coming over tomorrow, Bel needs to wear pants” before ending their call. “When’s your class over? 6?”

“Yeah, 6.” Hawke watched his screen go blank as he finished his offer of, “I’ll give you a ride if you want” and lazily rolled his head to the side, gazing up at Fenris, who’d pasted himself into the divot where the bed met the corner of the wall.

Hawke said “sorry about that” just as Fenris asked, “he went to jail?” and as much as Hawke tried to explain the situation – getting as far as “Anders called the cops” – he couldn’t bring himself to complete the story before he covered the space between them, flicking Fenris’s knees apart to sink all of his weight between his legs.

Hawke’s shared his bed with many people. He’s kissed even more, at parties or campgrounds, bars, maybe on a romantic bridge and a rooftop in the rain, both drunk and sober, stoned, high, while laughing and once while crying, many years ago. But Fenris had this way of going pliant against Hawke’s lips, inhaling his breath and shivering whenever their tongues met like he was constantly suppressing a moan, and Hawke couldn’t remember if he’d ever kissed anyone at all; none of the other ones looked at him like Fenris looked at him then, mouth parted and dark, a vast want glimmering in the green of his eyes just before they dropped.

Hawke curled his fingers into Fenris’s hips and pulled him as close as he could, then even closer, heart pounding heavy and erratic at the whimper Fenris made around his tongue. He leaned forward to steal it away, smiling slightly when Fenris immediately locked his arms around his neck and his thighs around his waist, latching and pulling, kiss deepening with every turn of his head, every sudden sharp inhale that lingered low in Fenris’s throat.

It was suffocating. “Christ,” Hawke breathed, on the brink of panting as he skated two hands up Fenris’s hoodie, his shirt, fingertips thick against lithe muscle and ridged ribs, the scars that darted between them. Arms around his neck stiffened, pulling him even tighter, tighter still, drawing him so fucking deep into the embrace that Hawke had no choice but to tear his mouth away, lips split and stilling around the gasps they exchanged.

Fenris was breathing hard and Hawke ducked to his throat, hands unapologetically shedding him of his hoodie before they wrapped around his thighs, coaxing them higher until he could feel the strain of Fenris’s dick pressing flush into his abdomen, warm and pulsing slightly beneath the thick denim, rutting hard against him.

Hawke groaned and ripped himself up, his collar stretching in Fenris’s grasp, his fingers frantically working at Fenris’s belt until it snapped undone. With a fluent tug he pulled Fenris’s jeans off and wrapped a fist around his leaking cock, dropping down to lick at his tongue again and sucking the moans that started to quietly bleed from the back of his throat.

He was so close to asking _have you done this_ , because Fenris threw him down onto his back and straddled him, but as he rode into Hawke’s hand and twisted his fingernails into Hawke’s sweater, eyes squeezed shut against his neck, Hawke realized that he didn’t want to fucking know who could’ve possibly touched him before.

“ _Fuck—oh fuck, I want you—_ ”

The plea cut through Hawke’s chest and he grew suddenly protective, jealous, dragging his hands beneath the hem of Fenris’s blue shirt until it rode up his chest. Fenris twisted out from his touch before he could take it off, and again when Hawke reached for his gloves. It felt like a terrifying stab, leaving him breathless with a need he never knew before, but he couldn’t ask about it, not with Fenris tearing off his jeans, not with Fenris’s shaking fingers guiding his cock up between him, against his opening with a tattered gasp of _please_.

Hawke latched his hands to Fenris’s hips and let him slowly sink onto his tip, biting his lip hard as he felt Fenris tighten against him. It was only when Fenris fell forward to delve his tongue between Hawke’s teeth that he turned them over again, want flooding high in his stomach as he broke away just long enough to feel out a condom and a packet of lube in his red bedside drawer.

_It’s how it goes_. It was a staggering thought, inexplicably clawing into Hawke’s throat as he slid a slicked finger into the boy with the bright green eyes. He caught Fenris’s strangled cry with his bottom lip, trying hard to have him understand that kissing led to fucking most of the time and that he did this often, often enough to feel bad about doing it to him, too.

Hawke added another finger and watched as Fenris screwed his eyes shut, tanned cheeks pink along its contours, teeth bared and white as the hair striped damp across his forehead.

Leaning forward against the weight in his chest, Hawke pressed his lips to the arch of Fenris’s eyebrows and asked, “you sure?” He trailed small kisses to his temple, down the side of his neck, blinking at the twist in his heart when Fenris nodded and urged him forward.

Hawke sat up and momentarily crooked his fingers before he withdrew them, an expert tease to Fenris’s spot that made his whole body lurch in shock. He couldn’t help but melt at the sight of it, and with intense reluctance, he rolled the condom down his cock, positioned himself between Fenris’s thighs, and slowly pushed into him with his face bent down in the onset of regret.

Fenris was too tight to take him. A sharp wail sliced the air and Hawke snapped his head up in worry; both gloved hands were pressed hard into his eyes, his lip bright and dark beneath his teeth. Hawke pulled out instantly, eliciting another cry, but this time Fenris’s hands dropped down to wrap around Hawke’s wrists.

“N-no,” Fenris panted, apology thick in his wavering voice. “No, sorry, no, don’t.”

But Hawke shook his head and gently said, “you’re good, Fenris,” as he gradually sank lower, biting at his shirt, trying to match the burn in Fenris’s gaze with his own before he dragged the flat of his tongue up his cock.

Fenris immediately thrust forward, a moan coming sudden and choked up. Hawke snapped the condom off himself and sucked him slow, totally fucking lost in the way Fenris's fingernails tore at his hair, thighs pressed hard to either side of his head so tight he could barely breathe, could barely keep Fenris still enough to swallow him good, and when Fenris came it was with a high-pitched gasp and Hawke’s name rolling off the edge of his lip.

Hawke pulled off slowly, mouth beating with the vague taste of a shoreline as Fenris pulled him up and into a wet, clawing kiss. His gloved fingers fluttered down over Hawke’s abdomen as if in a panic, curling roughly around the head of his cock while his tongue met Hawke's in another tentative whine.

There were so many things about Fenris that made Hawke wish that he'd met him way sooner, and he held him close as he let Fenris jerk him off, the fabric of his gloves painful against his skin, rubbing him raw and ruthless until he writhed through an orgasm that left splotches of black at the corners of his vision.

Later, with textbooks cast aside and clothes littering the floor, and the Christmas lights slowly blinking out from being on too long, Hawke curled his leg even tighter around the exposed edge of Fenris’s hipbone. They’d been idly talking; class, jail, how Fenris should come over for Thanksgiving, Isabela’s grating ritual of shouting “IT’S 11:11!” at 11:11 every night, but their conversation slowed to a soothing stop, and Hawke was left wondering how the hell anyone could ever look so good lying in his bed.

“Spend the night,” he breathed, raking his fingers up the thin fabric of Fenris's t-shirt, feeling every jut in his spine. When Fenris sleepily shook his head, Hawke gave him a quiet laugh and repeated, “stay the night.”

He did.


End file.
